


In Plain Sight

by lord_is_it_mine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur Conan Doyle Canon References, Barebacking, Blood and Injury, Bottom Sherlock Holmes, Case Fic, Drama, Drama & Romance, First Kiss, First Time, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Gunshot Wounds, Head Injury, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Sherlock Holmes/Victor Trevor, Post-Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Praise Kink, Sappy, Schmoop, Season/Series 02, Story: The Adventure of the Gloria Scott, Top John Watson, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2020-10-03 19:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20458061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lord_is_it_mine/pseuds/lord_is_it_mine
Summary: The thing that bothered John the most was the one thing he didn't know- who was the person Hurst killed, all those years ago, and what was their relationship with Sherlock? True, John hadn't known Sherlock for a long time, not long at all in relation to the thirty-something years of Sherlock's life before John had come into it, but he couldn't imagine that Sherlock had ever been the type to make friends easily. Maybe he had been different, before. Maybe something had happened. Maybe this, losing someone in such a way, had been the thing that changed him.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes elements from the ACD story "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" and remixes them to fit somewhere in a BBC Sherlock universe where ASiB has happened but no episodes after it. I've been in this fandom since the beginning and I'm out here writing fics that would have made more sense to be written seven years ago, but I hope you enjoy it now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You're not just anyone_. The words were crowded behind Sherlock's teeth, ready to leap out of his mouth at the slightest allowance.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", the Bad Man's name is Hudson. This would obviously be confusing and cause challenges because of our dear (not your) housekeeper. So I changed it to Hurst. My condolences to Conan Doyle for his tragic inability to name people with proper consistency. RIP to a legend.

\- _Saturday_ -

The gunshot was an explosion in a contained space, concussive and loud and muffled at the same time, sound bounced around and absorbed by the walls of Baker Street. Then there was the blood, the familiar warmth of it soaking into the leg of John's trousers. Then there was the pain, also familiar, and John was honestly just amazed that he made it through this many cases with Sherlock before he wound up shot.

_ Well _ , he supposed, giving into the collapse of his leg and falling back, head connecting solidly with the nearest solid object - _ it was fun while it lasted _.

* * *

_\- Friday _ _ -_

The case had been brought to their attention by none other than Mycroft himself. John had been home at the time, had just come from work, in fact, so there hadn’t been any fuss, no helicopters at countryside crime scenes come to whisk him off to some palace or another. Mycroft was simply _ there _, without warning, as he usually was when he deigned to appear, sitting in Sherlock’s chair when John walked through the door. Sherlock was laid back on the sofa, eyes closed, fingers steepled under his chin.

“Doctor Watson,” Mycroft greeted, tapping a rhythm on the handle of his umbrella.

“Mycroft.” John stopped in the doorway, and unconscious decision on his part to stay on the side of the room closer to Sherlock. “Has something happened?”

“Whatever gives you _ that _ impression?” This came from Mycroft, when John had expected the criticism of his rather obvious statement to come from Sherlock, who was still silent and completely unmoving. John stared at him, looking for signs of life, and was very nearly worried.

“Well,” he looked back to Mycroft, “you’re not usually the type to just come ‘round for tea and a chat, and since nothing’s happened, apparently, that means you want something from him.” He pointed to Sherlock, who smirked but remained quiet.

“How very observant.” Mycroft smiled a patronizing smile, which John had long ago become convinced was the only kind of smile Mycroft had. “As it happens, I am here today because I once again require the services of my younger brother, intransigent as he may be.”

At this, Sherlock huffed. “I am not being _ intransigent _ . I am merely refusing to help simply because _ you _ have asked me to.”

“Not intransigent at all, no,” John said under his breath, rolling his eyes and smiling at the way his words made Sherlock pout. “What’s this about?” he asked Mycroft. “I’m assuming it’s not anything really important, or interesting, otherwise you’d have gotten him to say _ yes _ \- or _ maybe _, at the very least.”

“There is a gala being held at the American embassy tomorrow evening. It is a yearly event during which all of the ambassadors stationed here in London gather for a night of music and banal conversation. Dinner, dancing, an open bar, dozens of people, all of them _ mingling _. Dreadfully tedious, I can assure you. However, as someone who is in constant dealings with her Majesty’s international interests, I have been forced to attend this event for several years.”

“How trying that must be for you,” said John. “All that free food and alcohol. Sounds awful.”

Sherlock had opened his eyes and was smiling again, a small, private smile meant for John, though Mycroft was no doubt aware of it. John ignored him and smiled back at Sherlock.

“This year's gala, however, is already proving to be a different sort of affair,” Mycroft continued. “I have it on good authority that there is to be an assassin present at tomorrow night’s _ shindig _ .” He said _ shindig _ with such venom that John nearly laughed.

“An assassin.” John leaned back against the wall. “You want Sherlock to help stop an _ assassin _.”

“Obviously, John. Do keep up,” Sherlock admonished with a frown. John rolled his eyes, feeling a bit like he’d gotten whiplash. There was the warm smiling just a moment ago, and now this.

“Our intelligence is limited. We have no way of knowing what sort of person the assassin will be, whether they will be posing as a staff member or a diplomat or even a civilian guest. We only know there will be an attempt on someone’s life.”

Sherlock huffed again, and John cocked his head to the side in question.

“Whose life?”

“The Deputy Head of Mission to the American ambassador- a man called Hurst.”

By this point, Sherlock’s frown had progressed to a full-blown scowl. It occurred to John that Sherlock’s shortness of temper had less to do with John being a simpleton and more to do with this Hurst fellow.

“I will be in attendance, of course, watching out for anything out of place,” Mycroft explained. “There will be intelligence officers as well, but none of them are so observant as Sherlock, nor myself especially. I will have eyes on the crowd, and Sherlock will be shadowing the target.”

“I will _ not _ .” Sherlock sat up and spun to face Mycroft, his hands digging into the sofa cushions until his knuckles turned white. “I will do _ no _ such thing.”

“_ Sherlock _,” Mycroft snapped. “We do not know the full extent of the assassin’s intentions. We have no way of knowing how many lives are at stake here, and no way of apprehending the suspect but during the act of attempted murder. One cannot prove murderous intent.”

That was a bit of an exaggeration, to say the least. John had seen Sherlock prove murderous intent on multiple occasions.

“Allow me to prove _ my _ intent, brother mine. I have no _ intent _ to do anything other than decline your request for my assistance. I have no _ intent _ to save the life of a man such as Hurst. The only intent I _ do _ have at present is the intent to do _ nothing _ and allow Hurst to _ die _.” Sherlock rose and crossed the room in a frenzy, tearing Mycroft’s coat from its hook by the door and pitching it into Mycroft’s lap.

There was a moment of tense silence, every muscle in the room pulled taut. An unblinking, unwavering glare passed between Sherlock and Mycroft the likes of which John had never seen. Sherlock looked as though he might take a swing at Mycroft at the slightest provocation, and John had realised there was a lot more at stake here than just death threats against an ambassador, though he had no idea what _ ‘a lot more’ _ might entail. He moved slowly, cautiously, stepping closer to Sherlock, fighting the urge to reach out and touch him, to smooth the frown lines from his face before they got stuck there.

“That was a long time ago, Sherlock.” Mycroft’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, and John was officially convinced that there was something else going on. “It has been said that holding onto anger is akin to drinking poison and expecting another person to die.”

“You have no _ idea _ what you’re talking about.” The words came out like a hiss, ground to dust between Sherlock’s teeth. “How could you possibly have any idea at all?”

Another moment, another beat, and Mycroft ostensibly relented, folding his coat over his arm and using his umbrella to push himself to his feet. “Very well, I suppose I’ll be on my way, then.” He made his way past John with a perfunctory nod, stopping in the doorway to throw the last word over his shoulder.

“I would hate to see any collateral damage incurred as a result of your absence. It would be a shame for any more lives to be lost in the matter.”

John looked at Sherlock, or at Sherlock’s back, rather. His shoulders rose and fell in slow, calculated breaths, smooth and rhythmic, air moving in and out of Sherlock in time with his cycling thoughts. A moment passed, then two, then three. And then it was as if none of the previous conversation had happened. Sherlock spun around, suddenly light as a feather, and fell back into his chair, an eerily civil air about him. John could do nothing but stare and blink and stare again.

“Fine,” Sherlock sighed, “I’ll go. But I haven’t got a _ thing _ to wear.”

Mycroft sighed as well, a much more burdened sigh than Sherlock’s. “I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”

“And John’s coming too,” Sherlock demanded- he had pulled his knees to his chest, resting his chin rather heavily atop them, a very classic Sherlockian sulking behaviour.

“Very well. Good day to you both,” Mycroft said, and departed.

Sherlock was up from his chair immediately, almost leaping over the back of it to get to the window. There was the creaking of the seventeen steps, the distant sound of the front door opening and closing, and then Sherlock pouting again and sticking his tongue out at what John could only assume was the back of Mycroft’s head as Mycroft retreated down the street.

“Um,” John began, for lack of a better segue. “You alright?”

“What?” Sherlock asked, looking up like he’d forgotten John was there. “Oh, yes, of course I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be alright?”

“No reason.” John allowed the conversation to end there, having finally been given the chance to take his coat and shoes off. The silence persisted for several minutes, during which John made tea and deliberated to himself what he would have for dinner, and whether or not he should even bother trying to get Sherlock to eat. By the time either of them spoke again, John was in his chair, steaming mug in hand and computer warming up on his lap. Sherlock had retreated back to the sofa and was clearly lost in thought.

“When’s the last time you ate?” John asked, not really expecting an answer.

“This morning, seventeen minutes after eight. Mrs. Hudson made muffins.”

“Right, yeah.” They had been blueberry, and they had been delicious. “I suppose there’s no point in asking you to eat something tonight, then.”

“I could eat,” Sherlock answered almost immediately, right as John was mid-sip.

“What, really?” he sputtered, looking to Sherlock. “You sure you’re alright?”

“I told you, I’m _ fine _.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Now, if you’re finished being dumbstruck at my apparently shocking admission of hunger- would you like to go to Angelo’s, or shall we order take-away?”

“Angelo’s,” John decided, sensing Sherlock’s restlessness in the wake of Mycroft's visit, his need to get some air and clear the cobwebs from his head.

“Excellent.” Sherlock was up and out of the room at once, presumably to go and get dressed. This left John with a half-finished drink and an ever-growing list of questions.

* * *

It was a Friday night, and Angelo's was packed. Sherlock must have called ahead, though, because he and John were shown to a table (_ their table _, as Angelo always put it, the one in the corner next to the window, candle and all) the minute they walked through the door. John had given up protesting Angelo's long-standing assumption that John and Sherlock were a couple, an assumption which had dwindled to quiet smiles and knowing looks but was still very apparent. It was almost encouraging at this point, knowing that at least one other person thought there might be something more to the relationship- it certainly wasn't doing anything to dull John's sharp-edged, almost painful hope that someday, by some miracle, the assumption might actually be correct.

_ We're not a couple. _

_ Yes you are. There- "I'm not dead. Let's have dinner." _

John thought about that moment a lot, about how Sherlock was there in the shadows, listening, about how he heard John's shouted arguments echoing off the high ceilings, about how John's silence in the wake of the Woman's last accusation was even more deafening.

_ Look, who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes, but for the record, if anyone out there still cares- I'm not actually gay. _

_ Well, I am. Look at us both. _

John often wondered if Irene Adler ever really _ did _ love Sherlock, or if it was all some game to her, the ultimate battle of wills and wits. He often wondered what might have happened, if she were still around, if she were still alive, if she and Sherlock might have- well. It didn't much matter now, he told himself, mostly as a way to tamp down the admittedly ridiculous jealousy he felt over a dead woman. He had to try (however failingly) to convince himself that Sherlock hadn't really felt anything for her either. Sherlock just didn't feel things that way, for anyone. It had been months since that rainy day in the cafe with Mycroft, since John had lied to Sherlock about Irene getting into witness protection. He never had the sense that Sherlock was the least bit upset about it, and he'd certainly never mentioned her.

Truth be told, John didn't know which one was worse- for Sherlock to love her, or for Sherlock to love no one. One thing John _ was _ sure of, though- if Sherlock hadn't known the true extent of John's feeling before that day at Battersea, he must know now. John had tried to be inconspicuous in his attachment, of course, but he had always known he was never much good at hiding things like desire or jealousy, and Sherlock was more observant than anyone John had ever tried to hide those kinds of things from. John thought of his feelings for Sherlock as an open secret, something that was known but was never meant to be discussed.

John had tried to bring it up, just the once (_ so, she's alive then, and how are we feeling about that? _) using Irene's re-emergence as a pretext for the real issue. He had braced himself for one of Sherlock's great deduction soliloquies wherein every single thing John had ever said or done to indicate that he had feelings for Sherlock that far transcended the mere platonic bond of flatmates, of friends, would be laid out before John in vivid detail. John had assumed it would all end right then and there: at worst with him leaving Baker street- and Sherlock- behind, or at best with an awkward agreement to forget the feelings ever existed in a desperate scramble to keep their friendship as it was.

But Sherlock hadn't responded to John's roundabout inquiry- he had wished him a happy new year and turned away to his violin. John had taken it for what it was- a blessing and a curse. Sherlock would never return John's feelings, but he would never punish John for them by cutting John out of his life. Being in love with someone who might not actually be capable of love at all was punishment enough, it turned out. Still, if he couldn't have Sherlock's love, John would rather have Sherlock's friendship than go back to being as alone and as lost as he was before that day at St. Bart's.

John's train of thought was suddenly derailed by the smell of food. He blinked back to reality just in time to see a steaming plate of mushroom ravioli being placed in front of him. It occurred to him that Sherlock must have ordered for the both of them while John was off in his own little morose world. Something warm flared in John's chest- the idea of Sherlock ordering for him in restaurants played into every single domestic fantasy John had ever entertained, the simple kinds of daydreams he so rarely allowed himself to have.

"Thanks," he said belatedly, the waiter having already gone.

"Are _ you _ alright, John?" Sherlock was asking, parroting John's earlier question whilst he poured them both a glass of wine. "You're being very quiet."

"Sorry. Yeah, I'm fine, I was just lost in thought." Thoughts that suddenly paled in comparison to how good the food tasted. John hadn't realised just how hungry he was. He chewed slowly and hoped to God that Sherlock wouldn't pry further than that. When it seemed that Sherlock might, John quickly changed the subject.

"So, tell me again about this party tomorrow. I'm assuming there's a little bit more to it than 'pin the tail on the assassin'."

Sherlock shrugged, evasive. "There really isn't. We'll have to mingle with dreadfully boring people for several dreadfully boring hours, whilst some dreadfully boring criminal tries to commit murder in the middle of a crowd."

"I would think that's the _ opposite _ of boring," John pointed out. "The murder bit, I mean. A bit ambitious, isn't it? Trying to kill someone with dozens of witnesses present?"

"Only if they want to get away with it." Sherlock had barely touched his food, which made John all the more curious as to why Sherlock had even suggested dinner in the first place.

"You think the assassin _ wants _to be caught?"

"No. I simply don't think he cares one way or the other," Sherlock explained, as always, like it was the simplest thing in the world. There was something else in his voice, though, something that rang with a hint of the anger that he had so blatantly displayed earlier. "Attempting to kill someone in a crowded room with the express intention of remaining anonymous is ambitious indeed, incredibly so. Something like that would have to be perpetrated by someone with a great amount of expertise in this area, someone who would have planned their crime well enough to keep any sort of law enforcement from finding out about the attempt the day before it was set to happen. No, getting caught would neither hurt nor help this killer's cause. They simply want Hurst dead by any means necessary, and they want a lot of people to see it happen."

"That reminds me," John interjected around a mouthful of pasta. "Why are Mycroft and his boys involved in this? Shouldn't it be a matter for embassy security or the American government or something? This party isn't even technically happening on British soil- definitely not within the jurisdiction of the British Secret Service. Or MI6- well, maybe MI6."

"It concerns her Majesty's interests, and therefore it concerns my brother. He practically runs the Foreign Office, after all. Singlehandedly, at times." Sherlock took a sip of his wine, fingers so tight on the stem of the glass that John thought it might break. "And Hurst is a political ally who Mycroft does not wish to lose."

John paused, choosing a careful transition to his next question. "I wasn't going to ask this before, but it seems relevant to the case, and I'd at least like to _ think _ you trust me enough to tell me the truth."

For an instant, Sherlock's entire face fell, more shadow than light in the warm, flickering glow of the candle. John might have thought he was seeing things if not for what happened next. Sherlock reached out and touched John's sleeve- more than that, he put his whole hand over John's forearm, stilling John's hand and making sure he had John's attention.

"Of course I trust you, John. I should think that was obvious." He moved his hand from John's arm almost as soon as he put it there, but he held onto John's eyes, leaving John speechless and transfixed, lost to the world around them, deaf to the ambiance of quiet conversations and clinking silverware.

"Hurst," he began, haltingly, after far too long a pause. "Earlier, you said you didn't care if he died. It sounded like you really hate him."

"I do." Sherlock's eyes didn't leave John's for a second.

"Why?"

"Hurst is an unrepentantly cruel man, if he can be called a man at all. He is a _ monster _, John, a monster who has done a myriad of terrible things- one of which caused the death of someone I was very close to."

For his part, John didn't look all that surprised. He must have expected an answer similar to that, Sherlock supposed, what with Mycroft's hints at Hurst's past wrongdoing and the acidic advice to Sherlock about holding on to anger. John was so much more observant that anyone gave him credit for, John included, Sherlock especially. He made a note to tell John just how remarkable he really was, should he ever gather up the courage to make himself (_ let _ himself?) say the words.

"I'm so sorry, Sherlock," John said, voice soft yet strong in a way that only John's voice could be. John spoke like this so rarely that Sherlock was a little taken aback by it. He closed his eyes, scrambling to capture the intonation and inflection, to fold it carefully and put it away in his mind palace in the file labeled _ Voices: Watson, John _ \- a file already bursting with well-worn memories of everything from commonplace hellos and goodbyes to raucous laughter to half-hearted complaints and even, _ here, use mine _. He looked back at John again and could only hope that John hadn't noticed.

"It was a long time ago." He shrugged, though it was ineffective weapon against John's genuine concern, something that annoyed Sherlock to no end whilst simultaneously making his heart jump into his throat. If he didn't know any better, he'd think he was ill. He had thought he was ill, in the beginning, before he had allowed himself to consider the obvious fact that he had fallen in love, clichés and all.

"Still," John protested, however gently, his eyes finally leaving Sherlock's face. "To have someone you cared about taken away from you like that, and to never have closure- it must have hurt. And that kind of pain doesn't just go away on its own."

John took a sip of wine and then continued to eat, apparently content with the answer Sherlock had given him, content to sit in silence and finish his food as if nothing had happened. He seemed to shine in this low light, the already soft lines of his face made softer still. Sherlock recalled the way John had looked on that first night (_ I'm not his date! _) and decided that John looked even better now, not different but more familiar, more beautiful now that Sherlock knew the history behind the lines on John's face, the depth behind the blue of John's eyes, and the kindness of the heart John really had.

"You're not going to ask me what happened." It wasn't a question, but Sherlock was admittedly a little confused.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'm your friend, Sherlock- I'm not going to force you to spill your guts about every bad thing that's ever happened to you." It was John's turn to reach out, to put his hand on Sherlock's arm, the warmth of his palm bleeding right through Sherlock's sleeve and seeping into his skin. It made Sherlock feel shivery, almost, like his hands might start to shake if he let them. John looked at Sherlock the same way he touched Sherlock, with a warmth that reached Sherlock all the way to his core. His hand rested there for one long, glorious second, the warmth remaining even after John moved away.

Sherlock wanted to believe that this _ meant _ something, that this touch wasn't without pretense, that John had some other motivation for it- but Sherlock was a scientist in all things, and so he could not allow himself to give into this bias, not even for a second. Simply _ wanting _ John to reciprocate these feelings, such as they were, was not enough to actually make it so. Sherlock could not afford to be tricked, not even by his own desires- _ especially _ not by his own desires. He forced himself to breathe, to remind himself how John really felt, to remind himself of what John had said that day at Battersea, in the moments before he'd found out Sherlock had been listening.

_ Jealous? _

_ We're not a couple. _

_ Yes you are. There- "I'm not dead. Let's have dinner." _

John had never before been so adamant when denying the rather commonplace misconception about his and Sherlock's relationship. But now, away polite society, and believing Sherlock couldn't hear him, John had held nothing back. Sherlock had hardly been able to stand it.

_ Look, who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes, but for the record, if anyone out there still cares- I'm not actually gay. _

_ Well, I am. Look at us both. _

Sherlock had left quickly after that, knowing that whatever John said next would surely have been altogether unbearable. He hadn't been quick enough, though, and John had been alerted to his presence. He'd foolishly hoped that John would come running after him, to stop him, but John hadn't, cementing in Sherlock's mind just how attached he had become, as opposed to how attached John was not.

There _ had _ been one aborted attempt at a conversation on John's part, but Sherlock had ignored it, sure that it would only end in Sherlock's confession of his feelings, feelings which would ultimately lead to John's departure from Baker Street and the partial or (more likely) complete dissolution of their friendship. Sherlock had decided then and there that living without John's love would be tolerable, if only barely, but living without John's friendship- that would certainly prove fatal, one way or another.

Sherlock became aware that he had been staring into space when John started to rock back and forth, shifting in and out of Sherlock's field of vision in an effort to get his attention.

"Earth to Sherlock- come in, Sherlock."

Sherlock blinked and John smiled. It was a bright, fierce thing that Sherlock wanted to touch, just to know how soft it felt; a thing he wanted to kiss, just to know how sweet it tasted.

"There you are," John murmured, and Sherlock very nearly gave into his whims.

"What I was saying, while you were playing moon-man just now," John shifted topics without missing a beat, another indicator to Sherlock that he was only seeing things because he wanted to see them, "was that maybe that's the motive. Hurst is a monster, you said. So he's got enemies- maybe one of them is out for revenge."

"Brilliant," Sherlock said, before he could stop himself.

"Ha ha," John retorted, clearly taking Sherlock's compliment as sarcasm. "Revenge is the most basic motive there is. Anyone could have figured that out."

_ You're not just anyone _. The words were crowded behind Sherlock's teeth, ready to leap out of his mouth at the slightest allowance. "Maybe not anyone," he said instead. "Anderson wouldn't have come to that conclusion unless it had been scratched into the floor in German."

John was laughing now, and Sherlock steeled himself, pressed his palms hard to the tabletop and let it wash over him, the sound of it chest-deep and soothing, a great wave breaking across the shore.

* * *

There was no more talking after that. There were words, of course, strung together in sentences that made up meaningless conversation, humorously exaggerated retellings of old cases, _ remember whens _ and _ he said she saids _, jokes made at the expense of the more moronic Yard members. John ordered dessert for himself and more wine for the both of them. Time stopped stretching and was pulled back in on itself, and they were suddenly to the bottom of their second wine bottle and mostly out of stories to tell.

This was how they found themselves walking back to Baker Street, cheeks touched pink by the wine and the cool evening air in equal measure, neither of them drunk so much as generally buzzed by the good company they'd found themselves in.

"Why did you want to go to Angelo's? You barely touched your food," John asked absentmindedly, when they stopped on the front step so one of them could dig out their keys- neither of them did at first, thinking the other would be the one to do it.

"Observant." Sherlock shrugged, reaching into his pocket, his shoulders- his whole body, really- bouncing with his movement. "I wasn't hungry."

"Why would you want to eat if you weren't hungry?" John leaned one shoulder on the bricks while Sherlock stuck his key into the lock. He paused there for a second or two, obviously thinking of something. John would have killed to know what it was Sherlock was thinking. This was a common occurrence.

"I knew that _ you _ were hungry," Sherlock explained, glancing at John sideways, as if John were the sun and it would hurt to look directly at him. "And I didn't want you to have to eat alone."

The door swung open, and Sherlock disappeared into the darkness of the front hall. John followed, his smile lighting the way.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I told you last night," John said, "I’m your friend. I'm not going to _force_ you to talk about something that's obviously difficult for you to talk about. But if you do want to talk about it, then of course I'll listen. Of _course_ I will. You don't need to wait for me to ask."
> 
> "Ask," Sherlock whispered anyway. He was leaning forward toward John, so close that he could see himself reflected in John's pupils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, peeps, for your words of encouragement on chapter one!

_ \- Saturday - _

John didn't get up right away the next morning, allowing himself a bit of a lie-in on his day off. It didn't turn out to be that relaxing, though, as far as lie-ins went. As soon as John opened his eyes, or maybe even before that, he was trying to solve the puzzle of Sherlock's deep hatred for the man whose life Mycroft had charged them both with saving.

Most of the pieces were already there- almost all of them, in fact, certainly enough to satisfy most people's curiosity. John, of course, had more curiosity than most people- part of it was just the way he was, but there was no denying the fact that the other half of his desire to know came from his relationship with Sherlock. John liked to think he knew Sherlock better than anyone else (barring Mycroft of course), but when it came to things like this, to matters involving Sherlock's past and Sherlock's emotions regarding said past- John was just as hopelessly lost as anyone else would be.

_ My brother has the mind of a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective- what might we deduce about his heart? _

The thing that bothered John the most was the one thing he didn't know- who was the person Hurst killed, all those years ago, and what was their relationship with Sherlock? True, John hadn't known Sherlock for a long time, not long at all in relation to the thirty-something years of Sherlock's life before John had come into it, but he couldn't imagine that Sherlock had ever been the type to make friends easily. Maybe he had been different, before. Maybe something had happened. Maybe this, losing someone in such a way, had been the thing that changed him.

And now he was being forced to save that person's killer. Being forced by none other than Mycroft, who was currently favoured for 'worst brother of the year' award in John's mind, after sending Sherlock into the path of the hurricane known as Irene Adler, and now this. There was a sudden surge of righteous protective anger in John's chest, the same kind he felt last night at Angelo's when Sherlock explained what Hurst had done, when John had seen a very real grief flash in Sherlock's eyes, despite how Sherlock might have been trying to hide it.

He realised, with a start, why he was so unerringly curious, what it meant that Sherlock had been so affected by loss in the past- it would be definitive proof for what John already wanted to believe- that Sherlock was more than capable of loving someone. It filled John with a strange and terrifying sort of hope, though he had no real reason to be hopeful. Just because Sherlock had feelings once didn't mean he would ever have them for John. And besides, John had already resolved to stay quiet on the subject, to not ask Sherlock out of respect, out of his need for Sherlock to be able to trust him.

Still, it felt like something was coming. John was enough of a storyteller to know when things were about to change. He could only hope that they would change for the better.

* * *

_ The common room is nearly always deserted at this time of day. It's a reasonable enough hour to be awake at, but mostly everyone is still in bed. Those who aren't in bed are no doubt in the dining hall, getting a head start on breakfast. _

_ Sherlock is therefore surprised to find that his footsteps descending the main staircase are not what breaks the usual early-morning silence. Of all the sounds he might have expected to hear on a morning such as this, the chaotic cascade of quickly-played piano scales are not among them. _

_ The boy's fingers truly do fly over the keys, both skin and ivory glowing in the newly budding daylight. The boy, whoever he is, has only opened one of the window's curtains, enough sharp, winter sunshine to play by, but not enough to burn at anyone's tired eyes. Sherlock Likes him already. _

_ When the boy looks up, still playing as he does, Sherlock likes him even more. He scolds himself for having such a reaction solely based on another person's looks, but even so. This boy is exponentially more handsome than the other boys in Sherlock's acquaintance. Allowances must be made. _

_ "She's in tune, but she's covered in dust," the boy remarks, launching into a piece that Sherlock quickly identifies the waltz from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. "I take it she doesn't get played much." _

_ "No, she doesn't," Sherlock confirms, already standing next to the piano, though he doesn't recall giving his feet permission to take him there. He runs his fingers over the glossy black surface of the baby grand, and his fingers come away dirty. "Not well, anyhow. Chopsticks hardly counts as playing." One would think there'd be more educated musicians among them, but alas. _

_ "You're new here," Sherlock observes. An obvious thing to say; it's the beginning of the semester; there are several faces he hasn't seen before. He couldn't care less about any of them- all except for this one, apparently. _

_ "I am." The boy's accent betrays his city upbringing and thus his probable lack of past private education and familial wealth. _

_ "I wasn't supposed to start here until the fall- waiting lists and all that. But my dad knows the Dean, so here I am," the boy explains, and Sherlock smiles, pleased with himself, though suddenly unsure where to look. He is equally transfixed by the boy's eyes, a shade of brown so warm that he nearly feels burned by them- and his hands, long, slender fingers deftly hitting every note even as he carries on a conversation. And his mouth. His mouth- _

_ Sherlock thinks of his violin, in its case, under his bed in his room upstairs, and fiercely wishes he had it to defend himself somehow, though he isn't sure what good it would possibly do, not sure why he has to defend himself in the first place, only that he does. _

_ "That's a unique arrangement," he notices aloud, swallowing around the racing skip in his pulse. This attempt at small talk doesn't really feel like small talk at all. _

_ "It's incomplete." The boy slides over on the bench as he says this, inclining his head for Sherlock to join him. Sherlock does, keeping very still so as not to let his knee touch the other boy's leg. Such a thing could be disastrous, though once again, he's not too sure why. _

_ He's never been this unsure about anything. It's terrifying. It's exhilarating. _

_ "It's a duet," he guesses, letting his fingertips hover over the keys. _

_ "Yeah," the boy says with a grin- it is a wild and wonderful thing, and Sherlock is scared to look directly at it. _

_ "I have both halves memorised, but I can only play one of them at a time," the boy is saying. "D'you play?" _

_ "Violin." _

_ "You any good?" _

_ "Yes," Sherlock smirks, "very." _

_ "Well, I don't know the first thing about violin, but I could try and teach you on piano. I don't suppose it'll be that much harder." _

_ "Unlikely," Sherlock agrees, and then, "Sherlock Holmes." _

_ He extends his hand and regrets it immediately, because the boy finally has to stop playing in order to shake Sherlock's hand. His grip is strong and his hand is warm and the sacrifice proves to be well worth it. _

_ "I'm Victor," the boy replies, smiling like he knows what Sherlock is thinking and doesn't mind it in the slightest. "Victor Trevor." _

_ Sherlock can already see his future beginning to brighten. _

* * *

Sherlock was already up when John came downstairs, which was remarkable in and of itself, since it was still before noon. He could tell Sherlock had slept, at least, and not been up all night- there hadn't been a case to keep him awake, and he had his pajamas on underneath his dressing gown. The dark curls on the one side of his head were flattened, and he stood with a slightly more relaxed slant to his shoulders, swaying gently as his fingers pulled the strains of a sweet if somewhat sorrowful waltz from the strings of his violin. John was relieved, and only then did it occur to him that he had been worried about Sherlock losing sleep over this Hurst business.

The waltz came to a crescendo and then slowed; it reminded John of a flame burning out, the final bright flashes before the inevitable fade, until all that was left were glowing embers, pulsing with low, warm light. Sherlock's playing was perfect, as always, able to evoke such imagery in John's mind. The waltz itself, however, seemed to be missing something.

"Beautiful," John said as soon as Sherlock lowered his violin. "Beethoven?"

"Yes." Sherlock looked both pleased and surprised that John had recognised it. "From the Moonlight Sonata."

"You have it memorised." Unsurprisingly- Sherlock had many pieces of music filed away in his mind palace. John imagined that music must be one of the easier things to remember.

"Yes." Sherlock placed his violin back in its case- John had never seen Sherlock be so tender with anything as he was with that instrument. "It sounds somewhat strange on the violin, " he continued. "The version I have memorised is for the piano- it's a duet, actually- so I had to improvise."

"You play piano?" Again, not surprising. John would never be shocked at the limitless talent Sherlock seemed to possess. Sherlock could secretly be a one-man orchestra, and John wouldn't bat an eye.

"A little," Sherlock admitted. It was the kind of thing that would normally have been accompanied by a shrug, but the air didn't seem light enough for it just then, like it was weighing down on Sherlock's shoulders with whatever Sherlock wasn't saying.

_ Why do you do that? _ John wanted to ask. _ Why do you make it no secret how much of a genius you are, but then turn around and sell yourself short when I'm the only one around? _

"Yeah, right," he muttered, turning toward the kitchen. "I bet you play a little piano the same way I practise a little medicine." He snuck a glance at Sherlock just in time to see the small, close-lipped smile on Sherlock's face. It was so unbearably soft that John had to look away. "You want eggs? I'm making eggs."

"Yes," Sherlock followed John into the kitchen, "Thank you."

Sherlock took the initiative and put the kettle on, and then sat at the table to watch John cook, eyes darting away whenever John looked at him, clearly waiting for John to make some comment about how hell must have frozen over if Sherlock was actually helping with breakfast for once. John wasn't about to spoil this pleasant domesticity with sarcastic remarks, though, so Sherlock would just have to be happy with John's silent gratitude.

Ten minutes later, there was tea and coffee and toast and eggs made just the way Sherlock liked them. There was absolute silence in the flat until halfway through tea and coffee and toast and eggs- John was beginning to think that Sherlock had retreated into his mind palace, until-

"You're really not going to ask?"

"Ask what?" John replied without looking up, steaming mug to his lips and morning paper in his hand. Sherlock narrowed his eyes, equal parts impressed and annoyed at John's ability to get so far under Sherlock's skin with such a simple lack of reaction. How the tables had turned.

"You are a naturally curious person, John. It is something we have in common. I, of course, have the intellect and drive to satisfy that curiosity, while you employ the method of following me around while asking incessantly inane questions."

John still hadn't taken his eyes from the paper, though he'd stopped reading it the moment Sherlock had spoken. That detail, however small, was immensely satisfying.

"Over the course of our partnership, such as it is, I have often observed that your curiosity is piqued to an even higher degree when the question at hand concerns myself or my past. I haven't the faintest idea why, of course, but there it is. Last night, you were practically bursting with the need to find out the truth, but this morning you haven't said a word. Which is why I reiterate- you're _ really _ not going to ask?"

"Do you _ want _ me to ask?"

"I don't see how that's relevant."

"Sherlock-" John had finally, _ finally _, put down the paper, as well as his mug. He crossed his hands on the table in front of him, tilted his head down and looked at Sherlock through his eyelashes. The blue of his eyes was stormy-coloured in the gloomy light that came in through the kitchen window. The same earnestness that was present in John's voice last night was present now, but it was tinged with a kind of firmness that reminded Sherlock of the way John talked when he was taking charge of a situation. It sent something like a shiver shooting up Sherlock's spine.

"I told you last night," John said, "I’m your friend. I'm not going to _ force _ you to talk about something that's obviously difficult for you to talk about. But if you _ do _ want to talk about it, then of course I'll listen. Of _ course _ I will. You don't need to wait for me to ask."

"Ask," Sherlock whispered anyway. He was leaning forward toward John, so close that he could see himself reflected in John's pupils.

John scoffed fondly and rolled his eyes, leaning away. Sherlock wanted to pull him back in by the front of his jumper.

"Alright then," John conceded. "Who was it? Who was the person Hurst killed?"

Sherlock took a deep breath and looked away from John for a moment, pulling at the sleeves of his dressing gown and biting the inside of his cheek, both things he did when he felt the need to occupy his hands or his mouth and there was no violin or cigarette nearby.

"When I was a boy, I attended a private boarding school, up North in the country. King David's, it was called. The student body was primarily composed of the sons of people with the sort of money and connections that could afford their children such a formal education. The vast majority of these boys were foolish and stupid and boring and not at all deserving of the academic opportunity they'd been given. I was under the impression that most of them had been sent here because their parents didn't like them or even care about them and wanted them somewhere out of the city where they wouldn't be an embarrassment."

"I found the whole experience tedious, of course. I never got on well with my fellow students, nor did I have any desire to do so. Halfway through my fourth year, a new student arrived. I always noticed when there were new students, but I could never be bothered to learn anything about them. But Victor-" Sherlock paused for a moment- his fingertips had been tapping on the tabletop as if it were a piano. "Victor was the first thing about that place that wasn't excruciatingly, mind-numbingly _ boring _."

"He was your friend," John realised. "Your best friend."

Sherlock nodded. "My only friend, in fact."

"How does Hurst come into it?"

"He was a professor at the time. He taught history and politics and mentored those students who he believed showed the most promise. He had a special class on weekends for sixth form students- every spring he would post eight names, eight fifth-year students that would be accepted into his special class in the fall."

"Victor was one of those names," John guessed. "And so were you."

Sherlock didn't confirm or deny what John had supposed.

"I didn't much care to be part of such a thing," he finally said. "Being stuck in a room for three hours every Saturday with the most arrogant and self-righteous of my peers held absolutely no interest for me. But Victor, he was smart, and he believed Hurst's favour could be useful- he was not naturally strong in the area of academics, though he more than made up for it with his natural charisma and musical ability."

"Piano?" John guessed. Sherlock nodded.

"I had known Victor little more than a year at that point. He was by no means at the top of our class, but Hurst offered him a spot in the inner circle nonetheless, which I considered odd, to say the least. He knew the challenges that would face him if he joined, but he was convinced that being in Hurst's class was the thing he needed on his transcripts for university- his father's money was new, his influence not as far-reaching as the fathers of some of our other classmates. He had much more ambition than I did- enough ambition for the both of us- he didn't want to be in the class unless I agreed to be in it as well."

"And since he was your friend, you didn't want him to miss the opportunity," John finished.

"He talked me into it," Sherlock stated simply.

"Talked _ you _ into it?" John whistled. "I would have liked to have met this guy. He must have been quite something."

John had meant for this to lighten the air around them, to lift the conversation from its current depths- but he was pretty sure he'd failed, though not entirely, since Sherlock did smile for the briefest of moments.

"You should know by now, John, that I only take the time and effort to make friends with people I consider to be truly remarkable."

John, who had chosen that moment to take another sip of his coffee, nearly choked in surprise- not only at the implication of what Sherlock was saying, but at the look on Sherlock's face when he'd said it.

"Sh-" John began, suddenly aware that he was about to say Sherlock's name in a quiet, breathless way. "So, what happened after that- after you started going to Hurst's class?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but someone else's voice came out.

"Boys! Deliv'ry for you downstairs!" It was Mrs. Hudson, calling up to them from the landing.

"I'll go," Sherlock offered, and off he went.

He returned a few moments later with two garment bags slung over his shoulder and two shoeboxes held under his arm- he was followed closely by Mrs. Hudson, who kept trying to get a look at what he was carrying.

"Compliments of my brother," Sherlock said dryly; he draped one garment bag across the table next to John and placed a shoebox on top of it. He then disappeared to his bedroom without another word.

"What's all this about, then?" Mrs. Hudson asked, staring at Sherlock's closed door.

"It's for a case," John answered.

"Must be something important." Mrs. Hudson tapped the logo on John's garment bag. "This is from the best tailor in town." And with that, she scuttled back downstairs.

John spent the next few minutes staring intently at the garment bag and resisting the urge to open it. A silly urge to resist, really. This suit was made for him, after all. He wouldn't have to check to see if it would fit- he didn't doubt that Mycroft had sized him up the moment they'd first met. And the party wasn't for several hours yet anyway. There was really no reason to do anything but sit and finish his breakfast.

Only, that would mean having uninterrupted time to do nothing but wonder what the rest of Sherlock's story entailed. John knew he already had a pretty good idea what had happened, unfortunately- but what he was really wondering was if the spell had been broken- if Sherlock was going to be willing to tell him the rest of it, or anything else for that matter.

One thing was for sure- John now had confirmation that Sherlock did in fact have the ability to care about someone in some kind of way- or he used to.

John looked once more at the garment bag and sighed. Then he took it up to his room. On his way up the stairs, he heard Sherlock's door slam open and then slam shut again.

"Sherlock?" John called.

"Just stepping out for a moment, John. Won't be gone long."

"Right," John nodded, then remembered that Sherlock couldn't see him. "Bye."

Sherlock was already gone.

* * *

_ It's twilight on the grounds of King David's; the lights of the dormitory building shine like lighthouses through the pale blue mist of the early evening. The sky has begun to darken in the middle, though it still burns at the edges- the ground has all been cast in shadow, the colour of the trees nearly sucked right out of them, only present at the very tops of the branches, all budding and green with the promise of summer. The world seems captured here, time suspended, wrapped in the bruised purple blanket of night. _

_ The old chapel stands deserted as always, silent bell tower looming tall and leaning slightly to the left over the abandoned graveyard. Ancient headstones stick out of the overgrown grass at odd angles; scattered, snaggletooth monuments to long forgotten souls. _

_ The end of Sherlock's cigarette glows, a slow-moving firefly hovering somewhere near his fingers. He perches atop one of the larger stones, looking back across the wide meadows toward the school, out of sight of everyone there, existing only on the fringes of this place, as he always has and always will. He breathes easier out here, deeper. Solitude suits him. He's always known that. _

_ "Those things'll kill you." _

_ Solitude used to suit him, anyway. _

_ "Not for a few years yet." Sherlock watches carefully as Victor rolls his shoulders and leans against the stone next to him. "In the meantime, I could be killed by any number of other things- pestilence, famine, accident, natural disaster-" _

_ Or you, he thinks, though he already trusts Victor with his life, or something like it, being that he's sixteen and doesn't need to trust anyone with his life in such literal terms. They haven't known each other for one semester yet and they've already made plans to visit each other during break. Sherlock sighs and takes another drag from the cigarette. Even at this distance, the flare of it reflects in Victor's eyes. He knows that to trust someone is to give them the power to hurt you in the belief that they won't. Sherlock has never believed in anything, and so he can't really pinpoint the moment he gave Victor the power to hurt him, metaphorically or otherwise. _

_ So he doesn't blink, doesn't move or even flinch in the slightest when Victor stands and slouches over, pulling the cigarette right out of Sherlock's mouth and putting it between his own lips. His hand brushes Sherlock's cheek as he does it. His breath his hot against the side of Sherlock's neck a moment later, smoke surrounding them and quickly fading into nothing. _

_ Sherlock is only focussed on the cigarette; a thrill goes through him, sparks lightning in his chest at this gesture, this kiss of an indirect sort, this notion that Victor so obviously knows what it means, that he meant it that way. Neither of them break eye contact as Victor holds the cigarette out between thumb and finger, daring Sherlock to lean closer and take it back, to continue the cycle. _

_ Sherlock does. _

* * *

The suit was without doubt the nicest thing John had ever owned. He laid it out on his bed and stared at it for what felt like ages, trying to guess how many months rent it was worth. It was incredibly bespoke, nothing like John would have chosen, though he did like how it looked. Navy blue with a light blue pinstripe, a three button jacket and even a waistcoat, navy blue minus the pinstripe, a tie to match the pinstripe. There were round, gold cufflinks to pin into the sleeves of the crisp, white shirt. The brown Oxford shoes were shined within an inch of their life- he could count his own eyelashes in the reflection.

John was tempted, oh so tempted, to run downstairs and see what Sherlock's suit looked like. He could do it so easily.

This temptation, he resisted. It had become a common practise to resist temptation where Sherlock was concerned; this was no different.

* * *

What little was left of Victor- only the ashes of his car, really- was buried in a crowded city cemetery, his grave simple and utilitarian. A small headstone, pale and plain, was all that was left of him, just his name carved into it above the dates of his birth and death, frozen at seventeen years of age for the rest of eternity. Seventeen seemed like a whole lifetime ago.

Sherlock lit a cigarette, holding the lighter flame close to his hand for longer than necessary, letting it go out only when it really began to sting. He stood back from the grave and sighed out a heavy cloud of smoke, waiting for the skies to open up and rain as it looked like they would.

He hadn't been here since the burial, a humid, orange day in the high heat of August, a day that was nothing like this one. It hadn't occurred to him that he should ever visit- Victor wasn't really here, anyway.

It had rained that morning, making the ground soft and slippery and soaked, though the sun was in full view when they covered the casket with the still-damp earth. Sherlock had ruined the knees of his best trousers, caked them with the newly-disturbed dirt that had turned to mud and stayed under his fingernails for days afterward.

For a brief moment, it seemed like he should say something. He hadn't said anything back then, words refusing to come, knowing that the person he would be talking to would never hear his voice again. He remained silent, then and now- he'd already said everything there was to say.

Sherlock took one last pull from the cigarette and stepped forward, leaving the still smoking stub on top of the headstone. His fingers lingered on the cold marble and he tapped out a silent rhythm, a goodbye, a last kiss of sorts. Then he turned his back and walked away. It began to rain.


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Did you mean what you said_, Sherlock wanted to ask._ About not going anywhere?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !WARNING! for a reeeally quick (one sentence) description of suicide, nothing graphic I promise.
> 
> Also, lots of exposition.

John was downstairs again, clacking away at his computer keyboard, when Sherlock burst into the flat, Belstaff collar turned up, hair glistening with droplets of the misty rain that had been falling outside for the last half-hour. John immediately took note of Sherlock’s cheeks, pinked by the frigid cold-snap of late March- and how the fingers of one hand were pink also, while the other hand was shoved into his coat pocket. Then there was the telltale smell of smoke. John looked at Sherlock and sighed.

“Oh, alright.” Sherlock withdrew his hand from his pocket, tossing a half-smoked pack of cigarettes at John’s head, and none too gently. John had to dodge the oncoming projectile but still managed to catch it with his hand instead of his face. He deposited the cigarettes in the desk drawer and made a mental note to dispose of them later.

Sherlock whipped his coat off in a huff, tossing it over the back of John’s chair and collapsing onto the sofa with all the flourish of a Victorian maiden with a severe case of the vapours. This was because of John confiscating the cigarettes. But it was also a cover for something else- the reason he felt compelled to go out for cigarettes in the first place.

John wanted to find Mycroft and beat him over the head with his own umbrella. Taking advantage of Sherlock’s sense of duty, the goodness he tried so hard to hide, forcing him to relive what was obviously one of the most painful events in his life. It was appalling.

Sherlock rolled onto his side, facing the back of the sofa, away from John, curling in on himself.

“Sherlock,” John said softly, when Sherlock had gone so still that he might be asleep. “I can call Mycroft, tell him you’ve changed your mind, tell him you’re not going tonight. You don’t have to-”

Just as quickly as Sherlock laid down, he jumped up, launching himself from the sofa and striding across the room.

“No need,” he said as he went. “I’ve already said I’ll go, and besides, it would only be a waste of a very nice suit.”

His bedroom door slammed shut a moment later, and John was left thinking of all the other things he’d like to do to Mycroft with that umbrella.

* * *

Sherlock could sense the moment Mycroft arrived, materialising like a spectre at the top of the stairs. Sherlock immediately stood, sneaking into the bathroom and pushing the door ajar so he could catch a glimpse of Mycroft’s impending interaction with John.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Watson.”

“Speak of the devil,” John said, leaning back and crossing his arms, instantly defensive. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to deliver your security credentials for this evening’s event.” Mycroft withdrew a manilla envelope from within his coat, placing it delicately on the kitchen table. “And perhaps to offer you some insight into the situation at hand. My brother is not often so forthcoming when divulging information of a personal nature.” He looked around, but not in Sherlock’s direction. “Is he here?”

“No,” John lied without hesitation, and Sherlock loved him for it. “He went out about an hour ago. Didn’t say when he’d be back.”

Mycroft’s eyes landed very pointedly on the Belstaff, in plain sight and in blatant contradiction of John’s statement. Instead of pointing this out, Mycroft simply picked up the Belstaff, hanging it on the coat rack before taking a seat in John’s chair.

“I merely wished to ascertain to what degree you had been briefed on the history of Sherlock’s dislike for Hurst.”

“I know Hurst was a professor at Sherlock’s boarding school,” John answered. “And something Hurst did led to the death of Sherlock’s friend, Victor Trevor.”

Mycroft clicked his tongue. “I’m afraid there’s far more to the story than that.”

“I don’t doubt it.” John turned back to his computer. “But I’d like to hear it from Sherlock, if it’s all the same to you.”

Sherlock couldn’t see Mycroft’s face- but he could see Mycroft’s head tilt downward, and he could imagine that strange smile-like expression Mycroft had when he was annoyed.

“With all due respect to my brother- he tends to view the past through quite a narrow lens- there are certain important facts he may have omitted, if they did not coincide with his emotional understanding of the events in question.”

This was meant to be a test- Mycroft was tempting John to break Sherlock’s trust, appealing to his curiosity. Mycroft knew very well that Sherlock was listening, and he was eager to find some fault in John, as if to show Sherlock once and for all that no one could possibly be so loyal.

And, as John had a magnificent tendency to do, he proved Mycroft wrong.

“With all due respect, _Mycroft_,” he said, getting up from his desk, hands in his pockets, “I don’t give two shits about what you think is important. The fact that Sherlock doesn’t want to talk about it, even to _me_, tells me that whatever happened to Victor Trevor was so difficult for him that he’s locked away a whole part of himself because of it. And for you to use that for your own agenda- for you to use the part of him that makes him a better man than either of us- I don’t know why I expect anything else from you. I suppose it was foolish of me to think there were lines that even you wouldn’t cross.”

“I suppose you’ll be rescinding his offer of assistance, then.” Mycroft stood to leave, but John rounded on him, blocking his path to the door.

“No, we’ll be there. Sherlock said he’d go, and so he will. He doesn’t want to see any innocent people get hurt- of _course_ he doesn’t. Which is the very thing you were counting on. But my motives are nowhere _near_ as noble as Sherlock’s. I’m there for _him_. I won’t stop him from doing his job, but I’m not about to let this Hurst character get anywhere near him.”

For someone so short, John certainly knew how to be intimidating. He hadn’t so much as raised his voice, but if Mycroft was leaning any further away from John, he might just fall over. Sherlock had only seen his brother so physically uncomfortable a small handful of times in his whole life, and this was maybe the worst of it.

“And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” John continued, just when Mycroft thought he was done. “I know you don’t think much of me, but I’m not nearly as thick as you seem to think I am. I don’t know if it’s me personally, or if you think you’re just trying to protect Sherlock from getting hurt, because you think I’m going to leave him, like he’s afraid _everyone_ will, but you’re wrong. I’m not going anywhere. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me. I don’t have anything to prove to you.”

Sherlock’s eyes were burning- it took him several seconds to realise there were tears blurring his vision.

John stepped out of Mycroft’s way, courteously gesturing to the door. Mycroft left without another word, his proverbial tail between his legs.

In silence, Sherlock watched John stand alone, smirking to himself, before he went back to his computer. Sherlock softly closed the door and turned on the shower.

* * *

_ It’s a heady, hot spring night in the cemetery of King David’s, much similar to others the two of them have passed here, sharing cigarettes and secrets, sitting sprawled between the tombstones. When the sun has fully set, the last of its oranges bleeding out of the sky, they will sneak back to their dormitories, disrespectful of the rules but eager to avoid the tedium of discipline. But on this, the last night of term, they have thrown caution to the wind. There are blankets and torches and even candy bars, stolen from roommates whose wrath could not be less feared. _

_ Most of the chapel roof has caved in, probably years ago, but the walls are still up, mossy as they are, the floor still mostly intact save for the parts where grass has grown up through the cracks. The pews have long since rotted or been cleared away, and all that remains of the altar is a raised stone platform. It is here where they make camp, under what little of the ceiling remains. _

_ They huddle together, though they don’t want for heat- it’s as if they’re trying to stock up on all the closeness they can before they go their separate ways tomorrow. They’ll only be apart for a week, and then Sherlock will be at Victor’s for the rest of the summer. But now, at seventeen, the two of them alone- a week feels so much longer than seven days. Sherlock should know better than to be so sentimental- but at the moment, he can’t bring himself to care. _

_ Victor is currently describing his father’s newly acquired summer house in Norfolk- a summer estate really, by the sound of it. The house itself apparently has eight bedroom suites, a full kitchen service and three formal parlours. And that’s to say nothing of the private lake, the boathouse, the stables and the tennis courts. It sounds incredibly posh, the kind of thing Sherlock would normally scoff at- but Victor describes it all with such genuine, child-like wonder that Sherlock doesn’t have the heart to hate it in the least. Especially the music room, where Victor will have his very own, full-sized grand piano. _

_ Really, it sounds sort of like paradise; books and quiet and no Mycroft skulking around, picking apart Sherlock’s experiments and bragging about his marks at Uni. _

_ And Victor. Six weeks of uninterrupted time with Victor. Victor, who Sherlock now realises has stopped talking and is waving his hand in front of Sherlock’s face. _

_ “Oi, Sherlock, you there? What’s wrong?” _

_ Sherlock reaches up and wraps his hand around Victor’s, brings it down so it rests on Sherlock’s knee. Victor leaves it there, even after Sherlock moves his own hand away. _

_ It’s a shot in the dark, of course, a wild strike at something, and Sherlock doesn’t know how he has the courage to do it- but he kisses Victor, then, as suddenly as anything. He means to do it quickly, only once, but then Victor’s hand tightens on his knee and his other hand pushes into Sherlock’s hair and after that he loses count very quickly. _

_ “Oh,” Victor whispers, breath passing from his mouth to Sherlock’s. “Is that all?” _

_ Sherlock nods, and Victor kisses him again. _

* * *

Sherlock emerged from his room a little less than an hour later, dressed in pajamas and a dressing gown. No one would look at him and think he was going to a state gala in a few hours. John thought of the suit he had yet to see, the colours and the lines and what they would look like on Sherlock’s body. There was no doubt that he would look stunning. Even now, in the slouchiest of his clothes, a t-shirt with holes in the collar, Sherlock looked like a Renaissance painting, or perhaps Michaelangelo’s David, his marble skin pale and nearly translucent in the grey-wash light of the rainy afternoon outside.

If John were more of a writer, he would have tried to capture how Sherlock looked with words, for posterity, the way paintings are preserved forever in museums, never to be harmed.

People, of course, are not paintings, and Sherlock was far too bright a spot in John’s sky to really be compared to cold, hard stone.

“Mycroft was here,” John began. “He brought the security badges for tonight.” He was fairly certain Sherlock had heard the whole thing, and he wondered if Sherlock would bring it up, but Sherlock simply sat down at the desk in front of him and began to speak.

“Victor was from new money. He grew up in London. His parents were divorced before he was two, and his mother was granted full custody of Victor only because his father didn’t fight her for it. His childhood was poor, his mother was a barely-functioning alcoholic, and Victor’s only wish was to get out of her house and away from his life. So when his father, a newly rich investment banker, showed up when Victor was thirteen, offering him a life of private schools and summer houses, Victor jumped at the chance. His mother couldn’t care less where Victor lived or went to school, just so long as she kept receiving her alimony payments every month. Victor’s father immediately pressed his financial connections and enrolled Victor at King David’s, which is how I met him.”

“The summer before the last year of school, I went to stay with Victor at his father’s summer estate in Norfolk. We were both ecstatic to be away from school, from our insufferable classmates and Hurst’s Saturday afternoon lectures on ethics and philosophy. We spent our time mapping the woods, or swimming, or in the library reading books older than the Queen Mother. Victor was obsessed with James Bond- we must have watched every one of those films a dozen times. But mostly, we played music together. Victor’s father had bought him his own grand piano, and he could hardly bear to be parted from it.”

“Victor’s father, Victor Senior, was an amiable enough man for an absentee father. He liked me, I think, because my family were all well-educated, intellectual people, and because I seemed to be a good influence on his son, academically speaking.”

“One night in August, a little less than two weeks before the end of the break, we had dinner with Victor’s father. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the last.”

“Sherlock,” John said, noting how white Sherlock’s knuckles were where he gripped the sides of the desk. “It’s alright, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I do, John. I want you to know what happened.” It was unbearable, almost, the soft, bruised quality of Sherlock's voice.

“Alright then.” John closed his already ignored laptop. “Go ahead, then.”

Sherlock took a deep breath. “Victor was recounting the day’s events to his father, and in passing mentioned my then newly-found interest in deduction. Victor’s father, ever the skeptic, challenged me to prove the effectiveness of the science by using it on him. I was eager to impress him, and he had asked me to do it, so I was sure he wouldn’t be offended by anything I had to say. That was my mistake.”

“So, I began with the obvious, things I knew because of knowing Victor. Married young, divorced young, father of one son. But then I observed the shape and roughness of his hands- he had done physical labour when he was younger, grew up in Norfolk based on his accent, which is also why be purchased property in the area. He hadn’t come from money but did have a decent head for numbers, worked at a low-level accountant at several investment firms, but never held down the same job very long. Probably because of his penchant for sleeping with the wives and other female relatives of his superiors, which I had deduced from photos he’d showed us of several work retreats, as well as some of him more memorable stories. He was greatly amused that I’d figured it out, clearly not ashamed of his behaviour, and also clearly impressed. I suppose he thought I was finished at that point, that I’d uncovered his deepest, darkest secret.”

“But really, I told him, the philandering, while not admirable, wasn’t the worst of his behaviours. I posited that his recent and quickly acquired wealth was suspicious, given that he’d been in the investment business for so long and had never made any real money. I had no proof, of course, but my best guess was that he had made his money from insider trading, embezzlement and the like.”

“At this, his demeanour changed dramatically. He began to sweat, his breathing grew thin, and he bolted from the room without a word to either of us. I had no idea what to say, or what the consequences of my actions would be. I turned to Victor, but he looked at me suddenly, the way my other classmates always head- with derision, anger. And then he left as well.”

John braced himself for the story to get much worse. Sherlock’s hands were no longer gripping the desk, but were clasped in front of him, knuckles even whiter than before.

“Victor’s father, as it turns out, had been routinely shorting stock and embezzling from his clients, after he realised he didn’t have what it took to be legitimately successful. He had lived in paranoia for years, afraid that someone might find out about his crimes and expose them. And someone had.”

“Hurst,” John realised.

Sherlock Nodded. “His entire reason for starting the sixth form Saturday class was to get closest to the parents of his chosen students. CEOs, politicians, investment bankers like Victor’s father. He’d learn their secrets, however scandalous, and extort any number of favours from them, monetary or political. He’d been doing it his whole career, long before Victor and I were students at King David’s.”

“At the time, neither of us had any knowledge of Hurst’s crimes, or that he’d recently sent Victor’s father a letter demanding more money, more than Victor’s father could afford. The letter also implied that Hurst would have people watching, ready to expose him at any time should he fail to pay what he owed. I suppose Victor’s father thought I was a spy, sent by Hurst by way of my friendship with Victor. It wasn’t true, obviously, but he’d lived in fear for long enough that it had taken an irreparable toll on his health.”

“That night, once everyone was asleep, Victor’s father took a belt and hanged himself from the upstairs railing. One of the maids found him early in the morning, and all hell broke loose. The police were called, of course, and an official inquiry was opened into the circumstances surrounding his death. They found a suicide note on the desk in his study, detailing his own crimes as well as the blackmail he experienced at the hands of Hurst.”

“It rained steadily all morning and into the afternoon. By the time the sun set, the skies were clear, and Victor was very, very drunk. I didn’t know what to do. I was unaccustomed to death and all the questions that come with it. I was unprepared to comfort Victor, especially when I found that my condolences were unwelcome.”

“He was angry, to say the very least. Angry at everyone, everything. His new life, the one he had dreamed of, was in shambles. His father was dead and disgraced- the money would be gone soon, and any hope Victor had of going to a good university and maintaining a good reputation had been quashed. He had discovered that Hurst, who had become something of a mentor to him, was behind all of it, and that there was in fact no one he could trust. In his grief and rage, that distrust extended to me. He believed that my deduction had played some hand in driving his father to suicide, despite the evidence to suggest otherwise. I tried to reason with him, but I have since learned that the grieving are rarely rational.”

“He said I was a freak, and that all of our classmates had been right to ostracize me, that my presence was ruinous and that he wished we had never met.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” John whispered.

“I was so taken aback by this that I didn’t realise where Victor was going, but I followed him, out of the house and into the garden. By the time I got to the garage, he was already speeding away in his father’s car. That was the last I saw of him.”

“He made it out of Norfolk and into Sussex before the accident occurred. It was dark, the roads were still wet, and he was upset, intoxicated. He came around a sharp bend in the road and spun out of control, right into the path of a petrol tanker.”

“The car was incinerated. There wasn’t even a body to bury.”

John sighed heavily, leaning his chin in his hand. “And Hurst was never implicated in any of it?”

“He was brought up on charges of extortion, blackmail, and threatening bodily harm. But those charges were never made public. His connections and influence, however ill-gotten, were deemed by some government officials to be too valuable of an asset. The charges were dropped, and he’s been working for the Home Office ever since, as an operative and informant.”

“Mycroft.” John ground his teeth. “He’s known about this all along?”

“Of course.” Sherlock shrugged. “He was only just finishing at University at the time, but eventually, when he did begin working for the government- yes, he knew. He’s been Hurst’s handler ever since Hurst was assigned to the American Ambassador.”

“No wonder you don’t want to help him.”

“Hurst?”

“Mycroft. Both of them.” John leaned forward, meeting Sherlock’s eyes. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I know it must be difficult.”

_ Did you mean what you said? _ Sherlock wanted to ask.  _ About not going anywhere? _

“And I meant what I said,” John continued, reading Sherlock’s mind. “When Mycroft was here. Don’t act surprised, I know you heard. And I meant it. All of it.”

If it wasn’t for the fear, tethering his heart, pulling him away, Sherlock would have kissed him.

“We still have time to eat before we have to get ready,” he said instead. “Takeaway? I’m starving.”

* * *

John had expected Sherlock to become more tense and less talkative the closer they came to having to leave. But once he had told John the whole story, elaborating on some of the details seemed to become easier for him. Not wanting to badger him, John tried to keep his questions to a minimum. He was really just glad to see Sherlock eating so readily, and for the second time in one day.

“Did you go back?” he asked around a mouthful of vegetable chop suey. “To King David’s, I mean.”

Sherlock nodded, picking through a container of garlic shrimp with his chopsticks. “I had one year left. My parents were concerned for my well being, of course, but I was determined to do it, mostly out of spite. I’d never liked Hurst, even before I found out just what kind of man he really was. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing me run and hide.”

“He was still there? You said he went to work for the Home Office.”

“He was. They determined that his influence over the children of some of England’s most rich and powerful was apparently an invaluable resource. So they made him headmaster.”

John blinked. “They what?”

“During assembly on the first day of term, he gave a long-winded speech about the new ‘code of ethics’ he was implementing at the school. Of course, no one was listening, really. Victor had only been gone two weeks, and no one knew any of the details. They were desperate for any shred of information to fuel their gossip mill.”

“I’m sure he didn’t have anything good to say,” John guessed.

“Not only did he grossly misrepresent the circumstances of Victor’s death- he used the fact that Victor had been intoxicated behind the wheel as an illustration of the sort of ‘loose morals’ that would not be tolerated now that he was headmaster.”

“Christ.” John shook his head. “I might shoot him myself.”

Sherlock gave him a knowing look, but said nothing. They passed the rest of dinner in relative silence, and when Sherlock went to go get dressed, John was left with a sinking feeling about the evening ahead. More than Sherlock being put in a horrible position- John had been so focussed on that part of it, he hadn’t stopped to consider that they might be in real physical danger.

Upstairs, after fixing his hair, John took the suit from the garment bag, getting dressed piece by piece. In the lining of his jacket, he found a pocket stitched in, the perfect size and shape of his gun. He smiled. Mycroft may be a shit, but he did have his moments.

Standing in front of the mirror, fully dressed, gun tucked in close to his side, John thought he looked like something out of a James Bond film. He felt, however, like he was a soldier, back in uniform, on his way into battle. He only hoped he could do his job and protect Sherlock.

* * *

_ They are sitting in the music room. The windows are flung open, white gossamer curtains billowing in the warm July breeze. There’s a thunderstorm somewhere on the horizon, darkening the sky, but the rain has not come yet. _

_ Victor is at the piano, playing soft, lazy incarnations of famous waltzes while Sherlock lays sprawled out on the settee in the corner, his nose buried in a first edition Darwin. It is three in the afternoon and Sherlock feels the most at peace with the world that it is possible to feel. It is somewhat of a foreign feeling, but one that he is quickly becoming used to. _

_ A few weeks later, Victor is dead, and Sherlock is blindsided. He vows to never let it happen again. That sort of peace never lasts. _

_ One morning, years and years later, he wakes to the sound of John in the kitchen, puttering around, making breakfast. There’s the crash of something falling, the soft, gruff sound of John swearing about it- and the whistling of the kettle as it comes to a boil. _

_ He realises he’s been at peace for a while now. And he wonders, for the first time, if maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. _

_ He's not usually wrong. It's terrifying. It's exhilarating. And for the first time in his life, he hopes he can be wrong for just a little longer. _


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a snap of his wrist, Sherlock knocked the crystal tumbler out of Hurst’s hand- it hit the ground with a glittering crash, spraying scotch and sparkling shards of glass across the marble floor, pulling everyone’s attention in an instant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup hoes I'm back at it

The suit was  _ exquisite _ .

Sherlock turned in front of the mirror again, admiring the darkness of the fabric, such a deep purple that it was almost black. The craftsmanship was flawless, the seams almost invisible, tailored perfectly to his body. He spared a thought for whomever had stayed up all night sewing. He hoped Mycroft had compensated them for their masterful work.

“Sherlock! The car is here.”

John was standing at the front window, face turned, neck craned as he looked down into the street.

“That must be for us- black sedan, government plates,” John was saying, but Sherlock heard none of it. He had stopped in the doorway and was staring stupidly, utterly transfixed by John’s appearance.

It had grown dark outside- the only light came from the lamp in the corner, hitting John from behind, casting him in a warm, soft shadow that landed over the side of his face and the line of his shoulders. His pose was casual, but he still stood with a certain consciousness of what he was wearing; shoulders back, chest out, one hand in his pocket while the other held back the curtain. The navy blue of his suit was cold and dark in contrast to the silver that had recently began to show at his temples. The overall effect was startling in its attractiveness, and Sherlock felt his face starting to heat up. He looked away, adjusting his cufflinks, checking his watch, anything to keep himself from staring again.

“You alright, Sherlock?” John crossed the room to him, brow knit in concern. “You look pink. Are you warm?”

“No,” Sherlock lied, but not quickly or convincingly enough to stop John from touching him, pressing the back of his hand to Sherlock’s forehead, and then his cheek. If Sherlock had felt warm before, now he was  _ burning _ .

“I’m fine,” he insisted as John dropped his hand and moved away. It made him feel cold, suddenly, as if someone had flung open a window and sent a draft through the flat.

“Too bad.” John smiled darkly. “I’d love any excuse to call Mycroft and tell him we can’t make it.” He went to the door, passing Sherlock his coat before grabbing his own.

“John.” Sherlock took hold of John’s sleeve, pulling John toward him again.

“Yeah?” John looked up at him, eyes wide, and licked his lips. Unconscious action, force of habit, something he did all the time. It never failed to make Sherlock’s heart hammer in his chest. If he had ever known what he was about to say, he would have forgotten it. Perhaps he was going to tell John the rest of it, the whole truth- but, as always, it just wasn’t the right time.

“It’s nothing,” he said, breezing past John to the door. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The car ride to the embassy was a quiet one. The more open, talkative Sherlock had retreated back into his silent shell, a distant and somewhat morose look on his face as he stared out the window at the cold, rainy street. The only sign of life was his foot, bouncing incessantly with a restless sort of dread that didn’t match the rest of his outward demeanour.

This was what John had expected- a total shutdown of Sherlock’s emotions, a proverbial battening down of the hatches, anticipatory of the blows that would be dealt him. He hadn’t even bothered to put his coat on- he simply had it over his lap, clutching it close to his body as if it might shield him from what was to come. John had honestly thought all of this would happen sooner, but he wasn’t surprised by any of it.

He wanted to reach out, to touch Sherlock’s arm, offer some kind of comfort that might find Sherlock in whatever dark, desolate corner of his mind palace he had wandered off to. He wasn’t sure of himself in the slightest, however- he didn’t know how Sherlock might react in this turbulent moment- the scales of doubt and daring were weighed against him. So, he maintained the silence Sherlock had started, and kept his hands to himself.

A block over from the embassy, traffic had slowed to a standstill- their car became one in a seemingly endless line of sedans and limousines, all queued up and waiting to let their passengers out onto the pavement.

When John sat straight up and craned his neck, he could see the front steps of the embassy, lit up by big spotlights on either side. It was staged like some sort of Hollywood movie premier- one might expect to see actors rather than government officials. There was a steady stream of guests ascending the steps and stopping briefly to pose for a small cluster of photographers, all of them draped in plastic ponchos. Indeed, John saw more of the guests’ black umbrellas than he did of their faces- no one remained outside for too long, passing through security with an atypical efficiency, none of them eager to be out in such dismal weather.

Just as they were reaching the front of the line, their diver veered off, taking a hard left turn and pulling into an alleyway that went down beside the building. Not even this sudden detour was enough to break Sherlock from his trance. Only when they came to a full stop did he move from his stillness, getting out of the car before John had even reached for his own door handle.

The driver directed them to the service entrance- an old, steel door, battered by time and marked up by years of graffiti. The security guard at the door took one look at Sherlock and knocked on the door three times. It was opened by one of the staff, who took their coats and ushered them through what looked to be a storage room and out into the kitchen. John was hit in the face with a wall of hot air and the smell of cooking. It was a bright, if cramped room, with white walls and white coats rushing around, hustling and bustling to get platters of food out to the servers, who all waited their turns by the swinging doors on the far side of the room.

In the midst of this chaos stood Mycroft, impeccably dressed, more so than usual, anyway. He was checking his watch for what was probably the umpteenth time in the last few minutes. It wasn’t until they had reached him that he even noticed their presence.

“Ah, Sherlock, Doctor Watson.” He nodded curtly, barely even glancing in John’s direction. John was pleased to see that he had taken their earlier chat to heart. “So glad you could finally join us.”

John looked to Sherlock- under any other circumstances, he would be snarky about Mycroft’s passive-aggressive complaint, make some quip about the traffic or the weather. But he simply stared right through Mycroft, off into space.

“Yes, well,” John said on his behalf. “Traffic, weather, what have you.” Mycroft was lucky they were here at all. “So, where’s the party?”

“This way, if you please.” Mycroft led them through the kitchen, cooks spinning and dodging them at every step. “Hurst has just arrived. He has been briefed on the situation, of course- I have assured him that his safety is of the utmost priority.”

They breached the barrier between the kitchen and the ballroom- the close, steamy heat in the air was replaced by pleasant warmth and a wide-open space. There were tables set up at one end of the room, and a bar at the other end. In the middle was a dance floor, and on the far side of it sat a six-piece band, playing a lilting piece John recognised but couldn’t name. Several couples were dancing to it, waltzing around each other in lazy circles, the women’s dresses sparkling in the warm chandelier light, shadowed by the darker tones of the mens’ suits.

At various places in the room stood security guards, hands crossed, faces grim, curly wires sticking out of their ears, avoiding eye contact but keeping watch on everyone. They were all big, strong, and very conspicuous. John was most likely the only guest here with a gun, and he wouldn’t be so easy for an assassin to spot.

“Does he know I’m here?”

Sherlock’s voice pulled John from his observations- it was his voice, but it sounded so small, so different than usual that John almost thought it was someone else speaking at first. He found Sherlock’s face vacant, gaze roaming listlessly over the faces around them.

“Yes.” Mycroft nodded. “He was already quite assured of your skill- he has apparently been following your career with great interest.”

“Of bloody course he has,” John hissed. Then, noticing that Sherlock's eyes had stopped searching the crowd, he asked,

“Which one is he?”

Since first hearing of the man yesterday, John had been forming a mental image of him. He had imagined a tall, skinny sort, an old, wrinkled face, with sunken eyes that betrayed his villainous nature. Sleekly dressed, brazenly living off the money he extorted from others. His looks would be reflective of the blackmailer and political operative he was.

The truth could not have been more different. In place of a scheming, snakeish criminal, there was a man who looked more like Father Christmas in a tuxedo. Hurst was short and round, with a jovial set to his shoulders and a wide, congenial smile on his face. He had white hair and a silver beard and John had no problem believing that he had once been a professor. In fact, he looked more like he should be wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches, khaki trousers and scuffed oxford shoes, carrying a great stack of books under his arm, perhaps clumsy and bumbling as he hurried across campus. He was altogether unremarkable- one could walk right by him on the street and never suspect him of the crimes Sherlock had described.

“The wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Sherlock said, in perfect answer to John’s thoughts. And then, squaring his shoulders, he whispered,

“Into battle.”

* * *

“You don’t have to talk to him, you know.”

John took the empty champagne flute from Sherlock’s hand and replaced it with a full one. The gesture, more casually intimate than John normally performed in public, made Sherlock’s heart flutter. John was on full alert, standing eighty-nine point seven percent closer than he usually did, back never turned to the door, placing himself between Sherlock and any perceived threats- Hurst included.

Sherlock sighed. “Mycroft said-”

John soffed. “Sod Mycroft.”

Sherlock felt himself smiling, cheeks warmed by the champagne and the mischief on John’s face. “Agreed.”

“So,” John began, just as the band picked up a lively waltz. “See any assassins yet?”

“No,” Sherlock responded, eyes drifting through the few faces he could see “This isn’t an ideal vantage point. To restricted. It’d be better if I was mobile. Care for a dance?”

John, who was in the middle of sipping his champagne, choked. Sherlock waited for him to finish sputtering, his face going red, mouth pulling down as he blinked rapidly in confusion.

“You- I. What?”

“It would give me an excuse to move around the room,” Sherlock explained, “which would improve my view of the crowd. I could see more people that way, rule out suspects more quickly.”

John lowered his chin and leaned toward Sherlock, glancing around, self-conscious as Sherlock knew he would be. “People would  _ stare _ .”

“Of course they would.” Sherlock leaned in as well. “It’s almost impossible to hide one’s thoughts when one is shocked. I might find the assassin in a matter of minutes, which would mean we could  _ leave _ .”

He watched John think about it, watched his facial expressions travel through the same sequence they always did just before John realised Sherlock was right. He stopped short of it this time though, stuck with something of a frown.

“You don’t know how,” Sherlock realised. Heavily, and for the thousandth time today, he was reminded of Victor. Victor, whose father’s new money meant that he’d never been educated on the finer points of formal events. Victor, to whom Sherlock had given secret dancing lessons in the dorm at King David’s, so he wouldn't make a fool of himself at the social being held by the students of the visiting girls’ school.

“That’s not entirely true,” John protested. “We had dances, when I was in the military. They used to clear out the mess hall on Thursday nights.” his eyes darkened a little with the weight of remembering. “But that wasn’t nearly as fancy as any of this, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Sherlock placed his glass down on the nearest table and stepped back with a flourish, bowing a little and offering his hand. “Having been forced to endure an unfortunate number of these sort of events, perhaps I could offer my assistance.”

He could see John thinking it over again, with less frustration but more apprehension than before.

“It’s certainly not the most ridiculous thing I’ve asked you to do,” Sherlock reminded him. “For a case, I mean.” He dropped his eyes, suddenly unsure of himself- but looked back up again when John took his hand.

“Well,” John said, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “If it’s for a case.”

Between the smirk and the warmth of John’s hand in his, Sherlock nearly melted. He worried that perhaps this idea had been too self-indulgent. How could he possibly focus on anything else, on suspects of deductions or footwork with John at such proximity? His concerns were proven valid a moment later when John stepped closer, close enough that Sherlock could feel his body heat, and put his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Like this, yeah?” he was saying, eyeing Sherlock expectantly.

Sherlock took a deep breath and put his hand high on John’s waist, just below his ribs.

“Yes,” he murmured. Just like that.”

* * *

When John had seen Sherlock in the suit for the first time, earlier at Baker Street, he had nearly been floored. There had been a moment of near insurmountable temptation, the kind one gets in a museum when standing before a great masterpiece. He wanted so much to run his fingers across Sherlock’s shoulder, down the line of his waist, like putting his fingers in the grooves of brushstrokes that had been placed so carefully, just so, the texture visible to the eye but so much more pleasing to the touch. 

The deep purple fabric of the suit was as smooth as it had looked, but all John could think about was the one twist of hair curled perfectly over Sherlock’s forehead, or the blush, high on his cheekbones- John didn’t think he’d had that much to drink. Might he be embarrassed? It had been his idea, why would he be the embarrassed one? Sherlock had been right- this was hardly the strangest thing he’d ever talked John into doing. How difficult could a waltz be, really?

John thought he was getting the hang of it rather well- Sherlock leading had been something to get used to, but he hadn’t tripped up or stepped on Sherlock’s toes yet, so that was something. It was quite an achievement, he thought, given how close Sherlock was, how iridescent his eyes were at this distance, in this light- how gently he held John’s hand, how surely he guided them across the floor, circling through and around the other couples.

“You’re not actually complete rubbish at this,” Sherlock told him as they executed yet another practically flawless turn. A glowing compliment coming from Sherlock. “I should teach you properly some time. Such a skill might be useful for future cases.”

Right now, John was not opposed to that idea in the slightest. This lightness, this closeness- it would only be better at Baker Street, behind closed curtains, away from other people and their judgements- which they were no doubt making now.

“You were correct about people staring.” Sherlock frowned, scanning faces. “Tasteless The rich and the powerful, for all of their pretentious rules of class, have no shame.”

John had no trouble scowling back at anyone bold enough to gawk.

“So,” he said. “Which one of them wants to kill Hurst?”

“Most likely, it’s a man,” Sherlock surmised. “Statistically speaking, as well as the public manner in which this assassination attempt is to allegedly take place.” He smirked. “Though some of these high society women might have enough pent-up rage to do something like this.”

John rolled his eyes a little. “Have you ruled anyone out?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s Mycroft.” This made John laugh, which was clearly his intent. He seemed to have recovered some of his humour. “It’s none of the Eastern European delegation. If they wanted Hurst dead, he would simply vanish into thin air.”

“That does sound appealing,” John said, just to see Sherlock smile.

“It might be the French.” Sherlock inclined his head toward a group of very beautiful, well-dressed and haughty looking people. “They tend to dislike us on principle.”

“You’re assuming the motive is political.” John nearly gasped when Sherlock pulled him closer in order to avoid colliding with a nearby couple that had fallen out of step. “I would think there’d be a lot more people who want him dead for personal reasons.”

“Very good, John,” Sherlock murmured, and John felt his face warm. “Very well- who else can we exculpate?” He spun John suddenly, so he could see clear across to the bar. “Do you see that couple, arguing? He’s upset with her because she’s been having an affair with their valet.”

“How can you tell?”

“Body language, lip-reading. She’s distant, he’s frustrated. She has a very poorly disguised bite mark on her shoulder. And with the wealthy, it’s always the valet.”

“Astounding. So, the husband can’t be the assassin, because he’s too preoccupied with his cheating wife.”

“Oh, it’s not just the wife he’s preoccupied with,” Sherlock surmised. “He’s sleeping with the valet as well.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“He keeps checking his phone, desperate for a distraction. A minute ago, he seemed to receive a pleasing message. Sexting, I’d guess. Also, the bite mark on his neck is identical to the one on his wife.”

“Lifestyles of the rich and famous,” John quipped through his laughter. He had quote forgotten about being stared at- he had come to feel no one’s gaze but Sherlock’s- until he noticed Hurst, in his peripherie, watching Sherlock most intently. This got John’s hackles up, and he remembered that he was supposed to be on guard.

“Don’t panic,” he told Sherlock gently. “Hurst is watching you.”

“Yes, and he has been since we entered the room.” Sherlock’s humour had disappeared- he was sharp, terse. “Did you really think I wouldn’t noticed? Really, John. You think so little of me.”

The dance was ending- the band was lowering their instruments, soft applause rising to fill the silence left in the waltz’s wake. Sherlock let go and stepped away, but John held onto his hand for a moment longer.

“You know that’s not true.”  _ I think more of you than I’ve ever thought of anyone _ . The words were right there, a sore spot on the inside of his cheek, raw from biting them back for so long.

“What I don’t understand,” Sherlock blurted, breaking the moment and hurrying from the dance floor, “is how Mycroft got this information in the first place. Who would know enough about the assassination attempt to give its location and timing, but not enough to be able to describe the assassin themself? And what sort of assassin is so conspicuous that they let slip the details of a contract ahead of time?” He was pacing now, staring at the floor. “And why would they want Mycroft, of all people, to know about it? With his influence, his connections, there’s no way they could hope to succeed. Unless-”

And just like that, Sherlock rushed back into the crowd, leaving John alone on the edge of the dance floor, in his proverbial dust cloud. He didn’t say where he was going, but John already knew- Sherlock was headed straight toward the only real threat in the room- Hurst himself.

* * *

He hadn’t changed much. Outwardly, perhaps- his hair had been dark when Sherlock had first known him, the only grey pushing in at his temples. His beard was longer now, more bushy than the close-cropped style he’d had in those days. The skin around his eyes was smooth, too smooth for a man his age- botox then, or some such injectable- so his vanity was the same. So would be his pride, his boorishness, his manipulation. Some things, Sherlock knew, truly were constants.

Hurst had his back turned, pretending to not realise Sherlock’s presence, clutching a glass of undoubtedly obscenely expensive whiskey and laughing at something one of his equally pretentious compatriots had said. Sherlock could feel John’s eyes on his back, watching him like a hawk- he only hoped that John would allow him this confrontation and not interfere.

Before the ghost of any hesitation would rise in Sherlock’s throat, he descended willfully into the fray.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, breaking into the circle with relative ease. The gentlemen in question each looked at him in turn with confusion. Hurst turned and saw him and smiled brightly, dastardly.

“Sherlock Holmes! How are you, my boy?”

“I am well, professor,” Sherlock greeted, terse.

“Wonderful, wonderful- gentlemen, may I introduce Sherlock Holmes, brother to our compatriot Mycroft, as well as one of my best and brightest students from my days at King David’s. You may have heard of him- he has recently become something of an internet sensation for his work as a private detective.”

“Consulting detective,” Sherlock amended, though he knew no one was listening. One be one, the men introduced themselves, their names and voices falling quickly beneath the swirl of white noise rushing and roaring in Sherlock’s ears. His blood ran high as he felt Hurst’s hand clap on his shoulder and stay there. All he could see was the red creeping in at the corners of his vision, the red of Victor’s tail lights as they blurred off into the dark, barrelling toward death.

“I was actually hoping to have a word with you in private,” Hurst was saying, just in time for the wave to recede and for Sherlock to hear him.

“As was I,” Sherlock responded, hoping he didn’t look as haunted as he felt, hoping his empty eyes hadn’t betrayed him to Hurst’s cruelty.

“If you’ll excuse me, good sirs.” Hurst’s hand dropped from Sherlock’s shoulder to his elbow, and Sherlock could not help but feel a little like a student once again, being dragged away for a stern lecture on propriety or some such nonsense. Or, more aptly, like a lamb being led to slaughter. But unlike a lamb or the boy he once was, he was no longer unarmed, no longer defenseless.

“Did you willfully supply false intelligence to the Home Office indicating that there would be an unknown person or persons present at tonight’s function with the intention of assassinating you?”

Hurst’s response was close to what Sherlock had expected. He simply smiled, the corners of his eyes pulling oddly, skin plasticised and unnaturally smooth. Definitely botox, then. He seemed genuinely amused by Sherlock’s accusation, even more proof of his guilt.

“Come now, Sherlock.” Hurst chuckled. “Not even a little light conversation, no friendly chit chat before you come out with your misguided theory?”

“You deny it?”

“Of course! Surely you know that an old headmaster such as myself could never be capable of such subterfuge.”

Sherlock frowned. “You seem awfully calm for a man whose life is supposedly in immediate danger.”

“I’ve been told you are the most skilled detective in London,” Hurst replied casually. “And I’ve been following your career with the utmost interest. Always so satisfying for a teacher to see his students doing some good in the world. And if you’re as good as they say you are, why then, I must have nothing to fear.”

“I’m better than they say I am,” Sherlock retorted. “Which is how I know you’re lying.”

“You always did have such a flair for the dramatic.” Hurst leaned in, conspiratory. “I would have expected some sort of display, perhaps some grand monologue explaining my motives. Some indication that you’re enjoying this, even just a little.”

Sherlock felt a vein pulsing in his forehead, painful and thumping and ready to burst. He wished it were an aneurysm- perhaps then he might be put out of his misery.

“Under any other circumstances, yes, I would find some satisfaction in catching a conniving, manipulating, lying, black-hearted extortionist and murderer- but in this case, I simply would rather let you die and be done with it.”

At this, Hurst looked confused. “While I acknowledge that my actions throughout my career have not always been the most noble, even you cannot rightly accuse me of being a murderer. I have never done violence to anyone, I assure you.”

The red light had crept back up again- tail lights, blood, the flag thrown in the face of an already agitated bull. Hurst was baiting him. Daring him to charge, to engage in this came that Sherlock still did not know the rules of. 

He might have been able to resist, had it been anyone else, any other taunt- but tonight he was weary, worn at the edges and soaked through with the bitterness of memory.

“You deny responsibility for the death of Victor Trevor?” He knew the answer already, knew he had fallen into the trap as soon as the words left his mouth.

“Victor Trevor? Oh yes, that poor boy.” Hurst sipped his scotch, ostensibly thoughtful. “Truly unfortunate, that. You were a friend of his, yes?”

_ Something like that _ . “Is this why you lied to my brother? So you could see me face-to-face and what, gloat? Flaunt your ability to destroy the lives of innocent people and face none of the consequences?”

Finally, Hurst began to dispose of the pretense. His smile began to wane, and the sharpness in his eyes returned, the look of absolute judgement that Sherlock remembered so vividly.

“My boy,” he said, clicking his tongue in disapproval. “What makes you think this has anything to do with you? But then, I shouldn’t be surprised. Your self-absorption always was your worst quality. Understandable in a child, but a definite defect in a young man such as yourself.”

“So you admit to lying.” Sherlock’s voice was rising- he felt more like a speeding train with every second that passed- brakes disabled, out of control, doomed to run off the tracks. “But why? Why would you want everyone to think someone is coming to kill you?”

“You and I exist in different worlds, Sherlock.” Hurst was all business now, no more of his dottery professor persona left to cling to. “In your world, there are murders and robberies, people going missing and running away. Simple plots, uninteresting, uncomplicated. But in my world, everything is a gambit, a negotiation. If I wanted someone to think that I was under threat, it was only to win the trust of someone else more powerful. I am in the business of governing, of managing power you could never understand. Look at you, so preoccupied with your ideas of my slights against you that you never even stopped to think this was something you simply wouldn’t understand.”

“There isn’t an assassin.”

“No, my dear boy.” Hurst laughed. “There is no assassin.”

Sherlock breathed a deep and honest sigh of relief, already turning his back on Hurst, on this entire miserable affair.

“In that case,” he said, “I have no further business here. Goodbye, professor.”

“It’s such a shame.” Something in Hurst’s voice stopped Sherlock in his tracks, gluing his feet to the spot. “Such a shame to see someone with as much potential as you have, ruined over the death of a boy whose life never would have amounted to anything, had he lived. Mother a drunk, father so deeply disturbed. A case of poor breeding is what it was. It was really no wonder he died in such a way.”

Sherlock could have walked away, then. He should have. But he could never let such an insult lie. Hurst knew that, which is why he was goading Sherlock so blatantly in public. He had calculated that he could say whatever he wanted to with impunity, and that Sherlock wouldn’t want to make a scene. 

He had miscalculated. 

“Bastard,” Sherlock snapped. “You might as well have killed him yourself.”

“Now, now.” Hurst slipped back into his demure facade. “There’s no need to-”

With a snap of his wrist, Sherlock knocked the crystal tumbler out of Hurst’s hand- it hit the ground with a glittering crash, spraying scotch and sparkling shards of glass across the marble floor, pulling everyone’s attention in an instant.

“Admit it!” he shouted, seizing Hurst by the lapels of his jacket, too angry to notice the fear bulging in Hurst’s eyes. If people weren’t staring before, they were now. “It’s  _ your _ fault that he’s dead. Admit it!”

The echo of the first gunshot had barely dissipated before the second one rang out. Sherlock didn’t have time to react, to look where the shots had come from or where they were going- the first thing he saw was Hurst’s head whip to the side as one bullet caught him in the throat, the other entering his temple and blowing out the other side of his head. It was only after Sherlock felt the warm spray of blood on his face, only after Hurst had fallen in a heap at his feet, that Sherlock turned to see where the bullets had come from.

The space between him and the gunman had been cleared out- no one else appeared injured, but the crowd had parted like the Red Sea in an effort to get away from the shooter- some were cowering behind tables, others fleeing the room altogether.

When the gunman lowered his weapon, his face was full of the same shock and confusion that Sherlock knew he must have on his own face as well.

“Sherlock?” he exclaimed.

Sherlock blinked once, twice- but the ghost did not vanish.

“_Victor?_”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, onto the good stuff.


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was worth the wound- it was worth so many, many wounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE THREE GARRIDEBS MOMENT.

All of it happened very quickly- but to Sherlock, it was like trying to move underwater.

The years had not changed Victor’s face so much as they had his eyes- bloodshot, sunken, exhausted and near lifeless. The hands with which he held the gun had not lost any of their steadiness or grace; absurdly, Sherlock wondered if Victor still played the piano, or if he had given it up since he’d disappeared. And that was it, wasn’t it- disappeared, not died, because as much as Sherlock was woe to believe it, the man in front of him was undoubtedly Victor Trevor.

Sherlock felt his arm lift, pulled forward, reaching for Victor out of some old, long-disused impulse.

“ _ Victor? _ ” he asked again, “what-”

Victor bolted, dashing in a blur toward the door as a bevy of security personnel descended on the ballroom.

This was when Sherlock realised that John, much closer to Victor than anyone else, had given chase. The impulse to follow John was more readily familiar, stronger and brighter than had been the impulse to reach out for Victor. He was about to go, but Mycroft blocked his way.

“Let me  _ go _ , Mycroft,” Sherlock pleaded. “I have to go after him.”

“Which  _ him _ is that?” Mycroft raised an eyebrow, but didn’t give Sherlock a chance to answer. “No, brother mine. You won’t be going anywhere for awhile, I’m afraid. It seems you have some explaining to do.”

* * *

As it turned out, the American Embassy was a deceptively large building.

Behind the ballroom, there was an entire maze of hallways, rows upon rows of doors leading to endlessly interconnected offices. Thankfully, John never lost sight of his target, or he might have gotten lost for good in within the labyrinth. The monotony of beige walls and hairpin turns flew by him in a blur as he pursued who was apparently Victor Trevor himself. There was no time to consider how a dead man could have shown up and killed Hurst out of the blue, but John was already looking forward to catching him and getting to the truth of what would no doubt be a ridiculous set of circumstances.

The lights in the hallways were on, but whenever John had to cross into an office, he would be left stumbling in the dark, led only by the residual glow from the windows, the slivers of light from the hallway beyond. He knew he would be on his own, if he did catch up to Victor- there was no feasible way the security guards could so quickly navigate this area- John was barely managing it, and he could still see Victor, the back of his jacket, his close-cropped hair the colour of night.

After what seemed like a dozen turns and several minutes of not knowing which way was which, John caught up. Victor had stumbled into what seemed like a dead end, a large conference room with high windows and a long, ovular table surrounded by armchairs. John pulled his gun and trained it on Victor before Victor could do the same.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said, when Victor started to raise his weapon. “Toss it away, get on your knees.”

It was a tricky thing. Victor had put himself on the other side of the table from John, and if John wasn’t careful, Victor would run around and be gone and John would lose him. But instead, Victor lowered the gun, setting it on the table and sliding it across the veneer surface with a loud hiss.

“Please.” Victor began to raise his hands. “You don’t understand.”

“I think I do, actually.” John began to approach, slowly but surely. “Believe me, I’m not sad to see that bastard dead, but I’m not about to let you leave before you explain yourself to Sherlock. He deserves to know what the hell happened to you.”

Victor’s eyes widened in the dark- full of light, almost hopeful. “You know Sherlock?”

Before John could answer, there were footsteps not far-off, torchlight flashing in and around the doorway.

“Security!” Someone shouted. “Lower your weapons and get on the ground!”

Just like that, Victor jumped. He caught John with a fist to his cheek, dazing him enough to drop his gun, but not enough to knock him off his feet. He lunged at Victor, grabbing him around the waist and taking him to the floor. 

Victor was taller than John was, and lighter- he slipped out of John’s grasp just as quickly, pushing and clawing at his face as he did so. John felt his skin split and cursed- he was distracted only for a moment, but it was all Victor needed to knock him into the nearest wall, dazing him again. He heard glass smashing and saw Victor’s silhouette as it leapt through the window- and then he was gone.

Several agents poured into the room, sweeping it with their weapons, demanding surrender from anyone who might be armed. John sighed, slumping back against the wall and raising his hands, wondering if Sherlock was faring any better.

* * *

The room Mycroft had cornered him in was as nondescript as rooms could be- small, windowless, dim and obviously unused. It might as well have been a prison cell.

“Unbe _ lievable _ ,” Mycroft was saying, loudly, as close to shouting as Mycroft ever came. His professional scolding tone had been replaced with a less formal one, that of an older sibling about to tear into a younger one, with no other motives involved. “Not only did you fail to complete the task I assigned you, but you made a point of embarrassing me on an international stage as well.”

Sherlock scoffed. “I’d be more concerned with your own shortcomings, if I were you. How did you fail to realise that the threat on Hurst’s life was a false threat made by Hurst himself?”

“It doesn’t seem false  _ now _ , does it?” Mycroft was quickly losing what little was left of his composure. “No one will ever know he made the threat himself! All anyone will know is that you instigated a physical altercation with a respected government official who was then shot dead in front of several heads of state. Not to mention that the man who shot him was thought to be dead, and was furthermore a man with whom you have a previous connection.”

Sherlock was caught off-guard by this, flabbergasted by Mycroft’s implication.

“Are you insinuating that I somehow knew that Victor was alive? That I helped him plan and execute this crime?” He didn’t really feel it  _ was _ a crime, but that was beside the point.

“This would not be the first occasion on which you have consorted with a known enemy of the Crown, or aided and abetted said enemy in escaping from justice, or even helped said enemy fake their own demise.”

“What does the Woman have to do with any of this?”

“It was another instance where you allowed yourself to become emotionally attached, and therefore had your judgement compromised to a level that not only affected your own reputation but mine as well.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t in love with her, was I?”

Mycroft blinked and stepped back, as if Sherlock had struck him.

“What I mean to say,” Sherlock continued, “is that if I had known, if I had so much as an inkling that Victor was alive, I never would have come here tonight in the first place. You can explain that to however many of your superiors as you have to.”

Mycroft sighed. “Sherlock-”

Sherlock held up his hand, having no interest in anything further his brother had to say to him. “I need to go see that John is alright.” And wasn’t this a mess. What would John think of him now? “And have someone get me my coat.”

* * *

John winced at the antiseptic swab on his skin. The paramedic, James, he had said his name was, smiled apologetically, fingers prodding and pulling John’s skin before pressing butterfly plasters to his forehead to hold the wound closed. The whole left side of John’s face was throbbing- he could feel his eye going black and blue already, and he knew he’d have a proper shiner in the morning.

He was sitting on a barstool in the corner of the ballroom- the place had been cleared out in a hurry- people fleeing in panic, leaving tables overturned, glasses smashed on the floor. Overall, it looked like a very good party gone horribly wrong. As the room was still an active crime scene, no one had touched a single shard-nothing had been swept, scrubbed or otherwise cleaned. The most that had changed was the white sheet, which one of the housekeeping staff had brought down to drape over the body of the very deservingly murdered Hurst. Blood soaked through at his head, or what was left of it. Sherlock had caught some of the blood splatter- John wondered if he’d found anything to clean up with yet.

Just as the ambulance arrived, Mycroft had dragged Sherlock off by the ear, presumably to lecture him about the mortal sin of showing emotions in public. John could hear pieces of their discussion, which was taking place around a corner, behind a door somewhere. The rise and fall of their voices were audible but indistinct- even if John had been trying to eavesdrop, he wouldn’t have been able to parse any of the words being spoken.

“Well, Doctor Watson,” James said, handing John a blue ice pack. “There’s no sign of a concussion- you’ll be sore for a few days, but it doesn’t seem to be anything too serious.” He smiled, peeling his gloves off. “Of course, you know that already, being a doctor and all.”

“Yeah, thank-you, thanks.” John nodded, smiled, but his attention was still pulled to wherever Sherlock had gone.

There was a crescendo to the conversation- the voices rose to the point where John could almost make out some specific words- it was Sherlock who shouted, and Sherlock who appeared a moment later, coat pulled around him, John’s coat in hand. He watched James carefully, assessing him as he packed up his kit and headed back outside to the ambulance. Then he turned to John, his eyes softer at the corners, sad as he looked over John’s injuries. He reached up and very nearly touched John’s forehead, where the cut was, then down to the blooming bruise on his cheekbone. John could feel the warmth from his fingers, though they never made contact.

“You alright?” This was the Sherlock from earlier, or close to him, the softer one from last night at Angelo’s- the Sherlock who hadn’t seen ghosts come to life or watch old enemies die. Hurst’s blood had dried on his face, his neck, the front of his shirt- it made his skin look all the more pale.

“Yeah, fine.” John pressed the ice pack to his eye, hissing a little at the cold. “No concussion- just a bruise.”

“Hm.” Sherlock glanced at Hurst’s covered body, from the corner of his eye, and sighed. Then he shrugged, as if none of it had happened.

“Well,” he said, sounding like his old, flippant self. “Tonight has been a catastrophe. Let’s go home, shall we?”

* * *

Back in the car, the mood was barely any lighter than it had been on the way over. Sherlock was back to staring out the window, but John got the sense that he was present, willing to answer John’s questions.

“So, I guess Mycroft wasn’t too pleased?”

Sherlock waved his hand dismissively. “Sod Mycroft.”

“Agreed.” John knew better than to continue talking- the frustration was arcing from Sherlock like electricity- he was only just getting started.

“He’s upset, to say the least, because of the international incident all of this might cause. Never mind that he thinks I’m childish and a disgrace and that my emotional outburst is what got Hurst killed. Or that he failed to realise that the tip-off about the assassin was Hurst’s own doing, meant only as a gambit to get him in a room with me so he could gloat.”

“But it turned out not to be a gambit,” John observed. “Someone did come.”

“Hurst couldn’t have known that.” Sherlock shook his head, hair falling further in his face.

“No one could have,” John reassured him.

Sherlock turned away. “Yes, well, Mycroft doesn’t see it that way. He seems to be under the impression that I somehow knew Victor was alive, and perhaps even that I somehow helped him kill Hurst.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not. Believe me, John, I had no idea.”

“I know that.” John looked Sherlock hard in the eye, saw the doubt there, the fear. “You had no way of knowing, Sherlock. I believe you.”

“Mycroft thinks that because of what happened with the Woman, I must just have a penchant for helping criminals fake their deaths and commit capital offences against the Crown.”

“What does the Woman have to do with it?”

“Supposedly my ‘feelings’ cause me to make foolish decisions.”

John felt his face growing cold. “ _ Feelings? _ ”

“He has it the wrong way around.” Sherlock seemed to just be talking to himself now. “No matter how many times I try to tell him, he doesn’t understand that there was nothing even bordering love in what I felt for Irene Adler. But Victor- that was something else entirely.”

It all made sense to John, then- how Sherlock had never talked about Victor, how he’d been so reluctant to at first. And then, what he said and how he’d said it, when he did finally start to talk about him. How unhinged he’d been with Hurst, how enraged, how unlike him that was. How, when he’d seen Victor standing there, gun in hand, Sherlock’s first reaction had been to reach out- spasmodically, out of some subconscious urge, wired into him so long ago.

Just like that, the final veil was torn. John had seen part of Sherlock he could only ever have guessed at. Everything was different and, yet nothing had changed.

“I loved him,” Sherlock confessed. “I was seventeen, and I thought I’d discovered a feeling so singular, so intense and inimitable that I assumed I would never encounter it again. And then I lost him, and I was sure of it. Even as time wore on, and the feeling faded away entirely- I thought I'd lost my only chance."

"I was wrong, of course. I was young, and I had no reference with which to contextualize my experiences, no corroborative data to support the hypothesis that what I was feeling was so rare and all-consuming that it could only occur once in someone's lifetime. In that regard, I was just like anyone else my age, I suppose."

“Sherlock, I’m so sorry.” John closed the distance between them, covering Sherlock’s hand with his. And then, miracle of miracles, Sherlock turned his own hand upward and laced their fingers together. He hadn’t turned from the window, but he met John’s eyes in the reflection. They sat in silence for a minute longer, the last minute before John finally tipped the scales of doubt and daring.

“You said you were wrong about never encountering love again. Does that mean you did? Encounter it again?”

Sherlock tightened his grip on John’s hand.

“I did,” he answered, and lapsed back into silence.

* * *

When they stepped out onto the pavement in front of Baker Street, John immediately rushed to the stoop. It took Sherlock a moment longer to see what John saw- the front door had been forced open.

“Shit.” John drew his gun, already on his way inside. “I’m going to check on Mrs. Hudson. You stay out here and call the police.”

Sherlock waited until John was inside Mrs. Hudson’s flat. He did not call the police. He did go upstairs.

Victor was in the sitting room, in Sherlock’s chair, smoking Sherlock’s cigarettes.

“Could you at least open a window?” Sherlock scoffed, passing Victor to open said window before flopping ungracefully into John’s seat. “You’re in my chair.”

“Yeah, I figured.” The way he held the cigarette was just the same as it was then: delicately, but with definite intent. He let the smoke curl out of his mouth, inhaling it back through his nose and exhaling it out again. “This one does seem more your style.”

“Why are you here, Victor?”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me, you know,” Victor told him, leaning forward, elbows-on-knees. The high collar of his overcoat cut above his jaw, masking the roundness of his face but accenting his eyes. “Of course, I didn’t really think you’d be seeing me at all. Bit of a turn-up, that one. Walking into that party and finding you chatting up the man who took everything from me. From us.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be you, did I?” Sherlock responded. “I was there to prevent anyone else getting caught in the crossfire, not to save Hurst’s miserable life. And he didn’t take everything from  _ us _ \- not when  _ you _ were the one who let me think you were dead for fifteen years.”

Victor slumped back, shoulders sagging. His head hung low, eyebrows furrowed. “I didn’t think you’d want to see me. I thought the accident was my way out of all of it, and then years went by, and seeing you became too difficult to even think about. I didn’t- I never meant to hurt you.”

“Well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

On the stairs came the sound of footsteps, footsteps Sherlock would know a mile away. He sighed heavily and braced himself.

“I swear to God, Sherlock,” John grumbled, coming up from the landing. “I told you to stay outside, why do I even bother, I really should just-” and then abruptly, the sound of his breath catching, his gun coming to point at Victor’s head. He was incredibly dashing like this, an observation so obvious that Sherlock had no choice but to note, it, even if only to himself. It was a thrill, always, to have John come to his rescue, whether he needed it or not.

“Ah, John, there you are,” he said. “I don’t believe you’ve been formally introduced. Victor Trevor, John Watson. John Watson, Victor Trevor.”

John pointed to his eye, smiling grimly. “Mr. Right Hook. Yeah. I remember you.”

Victor appeared to have questions, but he didn’t ask them. Instead, he took another long drag of the cigarette and flicked the ashes onto the carpet.

“Lovely,” John said, relaxing a little, though not enough so that Victor would get comfortable. There was still a gun pointed at his head. “He seems like a lovely bloke,” he said to Sherlock, who nodded.

“How did you know where I live?” Sherlock asked Victor, who had yet to figure out the situation he was in.

“Google. You’re a little bit famous, you know.” Finished with the cigarette, he tossed the butt over his shoulder. “Probably shouldn’t just put up your address for everyone to see, though. You never know who might come calling. There are some real freaks out there.”

Sherlock tried and failed not to flinch at the word  _ freak _ . The last time he had heard Victor say that word, with that derisiveness- it had been at him.

“Phone number is on the website. You might have called first,” he pointed out, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Or you could have surrendered to the police when you had the chance.”

“Yeah- why  _ did  _ you try so hard to escape the embassy if you were just going to come here?” John wondered.

Victor glanced at the floor. “You were right. I owe Sherlock an explanation. But I wasn’t about to get arrested for doing something that needed to be done.” He looked back at Sherlock. “And I knew that Sherlock wouldn’t call the police, because he would understand.”

Sherlock nodded. “I do. But what I decidedly do not understand is the fact that in your pursuit of revenge, you decided to put an entire ballroom of other people in danger.”

“Also, while Sherlock might not have called the police, I actually did,” John added. “So you’ll get arrested anyway.”

“Oh, good.” Sherlock looked at John over his shoulder. “Who are they sending?”

“Well, I called Lestrade directly, but I’m sure your brother will get wind of it and dispatch some goons to come and scoop him up.”

“Is Mrs. Hudson alright?”

“Just fine. She was asleep when I went in. Felt a bit bad, I probably gave her more of a fright than anything else would have. She’s next door with Mrs. Turner.”

Sherlock relaxed a little. “Good.”

Victor was just sitting there, looking between John and Sherlock in complete bewilderment.

“Who  _ are _ you?” he said to John.

“Colleague,” Sherlock replied, at the same time John said:

“Friend.” John smiled when Sherlock looked at him, and Sherlock couldn’t help but smile back. “ _ Best _ friend, actually. Flatmate. Bodyguard, on occasion. Which reminds me- I’ll be needing that gun,  _ now _ .”

Victor leapt to his feet, shaking his head, pacing across to the sofa and back. “No, this- this isn’t how it was supposed to be.” He withdrew his hand from his pocket, holding his gun loosely at his side. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Sherlock felt threatened. Not afraid, not with John there- but he was no longer sure of Victor’s intentions, his capabilities.

“Victor, put the gun down.” This was from John, who was in his most alert stance, finger on the trigger, no doubt ready to pull it at any moment. “I really don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to. I promise, whatever you’re thinking of doing, it’s not worth it.”

Victor nodded. “You know, you’re probably right. But I’m going to have to take the chance anyway.”

Sherlock saw it all very clearly as it happened. John was fast, but Victor was faster. I he raised his gun in a flash, aiming high at John’s body- his chest, his neck, places where bullets could kill. It was faster than a thought, and as he pulled the trigger, Sherlock launched into action.

There was the bang, ear-splitting in this small of a room. Sherlock had collided with Victor just in time to divert the shot, but not in time for it to miss John entirely- John made a sound of shock and stumbled, his leg torn through. The next sound was not as loud as the gunshot, but worse- it was the sickening crack of John’s skull connecting with the corner of the kitchen island, a crack that Sherlock felt in his own bones. John tumbled to the ground and lay there for a moment, eerily still, and Sherlock thought perhaps the worst had happened.

“Sherlock,” Victor said, and how  _ dare _ he speak now, after all that he had done. Sherlock snatched the gun from Victor and struck him with it, knocking him back to the ground, dazed, blood blooming from above his eye. Sherlock raised the gun again, truly undecided as to what he was about to do.

“Sh’lock- she-” broken and slow, but it was John, alive, calling out to Sherlock as best he could.

“John!” Sherlock flew to John’s side, falling on his knees in the blood already pooling beneath John’s thigh. He spread his palm flat over the would, pressing hard, causing John to groan and stir once again.

“Sh’lock,” he mumbled. “You-”

“I’m fine, John, I’m alright. I’m here.” Sherlock cradled John’s face with his free hand. “Look at me John, please. Look. Stay with me.”

John’s gaze was distant and glassy, but he did manage to look Sherlock in the eye for a moment, before he slipped out of consciousness entirely.

Not for the first time that evening, Sherlock wished more than anything that he could follow.

* * *

Later, John would only recover a scattered few memories from those harrowing moments. He would forget what was said, the gunshot, the fall- but he would recall Sherlock’s voice, his hands, his eyes.

“Sh’lock,” he mumbled, holding for dear life onto the lifeline of Sherlock’s touch, fighting to stay above the pull of unconsciousness, the weight in the back of his head dragging him down. It was the panic that kept him there, the need to know that Sherlock wasn’t hurt. “You-”

“I’m fine, John, I’m alright. I’m here.” That was Sherlock’s hand, cool and real on his face, pulling him farther up, out of the fog. “Look at me John, please. Look. Stay with me.”

John struggled to keep his eyes open, to meet Sherlock’s gaze- but when he did, he was met with a look so singular and honest that he couldn’t have forgotten it if he tried.

In that moment, his only clear thought was to wonder how he ever could have doubted that Sherlock’s heart was as vast, as deep and great as his mind. He saw plainly, for that instant, the full extent of his love returned, all of it present in the clear, hard eyes that softened as they looked on him, his lips that shook as tears were formed and blinked away. It was worth the wound, worth so many, many wounds- to finally know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what Sherlock felt and how fully he felt it.

And then the darkness, unrelenting, rose to swallow him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're still reading this, thanks :)


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I swear on God’s name that if John had died,” he whispered, “you wouldn’t have left that room alive.”

_ -Sunday- _

Sherlock got to his feet and stretched each of his limbs in turn, feeling the balls of his joints creaking in their sockets, the pins and needles prickling in his left foot as it began to regain its sense of feeling. He felt cold and stiff from sitting on the floor for so long, chilled green linoleum and fluorescent block lighting stretched from one end of the long hallway to the other. To his left, a thick red line on the floor; just beyond it, swinging doors stamped with equally thick, equally red block letters reading  _ AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY _ . It was these doors they had wheeled John through.

John, who had not regained consciousness since that moment in the kitchen- his vital signs had been unstable in the ambulance, despite the efforts of the paramedics. The streets had been dark and slick with rain, making every turn feel hectic and unending- but they had made it to the hospital in record time.

The staff had been on standby for their arrival, but still, Sherlock had been unprepared for the ensuing frenzy. An army of nurses calling out vital signs, doctors ordering drugs and scans- all of it culminating in the rush to surgery. Sherlock had stayed close throughout all of it, until the very last possible second, when one of the nurses had to hold him back behind the line where he now stood. The last of John he had seen was his pale face, half-covered by an oxygen mask, the leg of his suit cut open and mangled, just like the flesh beneath it.

It had been hours since then. Midnight had passed, and the eerie silence of night had descended on the hallways, populated only by the occasional nurse on rounds. No one had been over to speak to him, to update him, and the itch of worry was nagging at the soft skin of Sherlock’s throat, the insides of his elbows, like the need for a fix. If he’d been capable of leaving his post, he would have gone and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes already.

He inspected his shaking hands, the dried blood under his fingers, darkened crescent moons. He’d gone to wash John’s blood off at some point during the commotion, scrubbed it from between his fingers; but still, traces of John clung to him, a lingering reminder, as if he needed one.

Lestrade, who’d given the ambulance a police escort, had offered to drive Sherlock home for a change of clothes, trousers with knees not soaked through- but Sherlock had firmly declined. He would not be going home until he had seen John alive, felt the pulse in his neck and the warmth of his hand. Not until the stain had been scrubbed from the floor, and all trace of this night was far behind him. Lestrade had known better than to argue. He’d left soon after, ostensibly to go and supervise whatever crime scene analysis was taking place back at Baker Street. Sherlock hoped with a sneer that Anderson wasn’t on duty tonight.

It was in this moment of reflection that Mycroft chose to appear, silently and without warning as was his usual bent. Sherlock couldn’t think why he would be here, unless it was to add some insult to this already grave injury. And so, he entered into the conversation in an according manner.

“What do  _ you _ want?”

“Simply to offer an olive branch,” Mycroft claimed.

“You? Commit a purely selfless act?” Sherlock scoffed. “Doubtful.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes but did nothing to rise to the taunt. He simply held out a bag. “I had some of your clothes brought over.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Even to change? I find it difficult to believe that you meet any of the sanitation requirements of this establishment while in your current state.”

“I’m not leaving,” Sherlock reiterated. “Not until I know that John is alright.”

“And if I could tell you that he was?”

It took a moment of consideration for Sherlock to know if Mycroft would lie about something so serious in order to get something he wanted. This was a moment that Myrcoft clearly understood the meaning of.

“Really, Sherlock.” Mycroft sighed. “Do you think so little of me?”

“Tell me.”

“The gunshot wound was a through-and-through- there was a significant amount of blood loss, but the bullet missed all bones, muscles, veins, and major arteries. The best outcome of a bad scenario, one might say.”

Sherlock released a concussive breath; but he waited to inhale again until the other shoe had dropped.

“His head injury was somewhat more severe. He has incurred a minor skull fracture. While his condition is stable, and there appears to be no notable swelling or bleeding in the brain, the doctors will not know the full extent of the damages to his cognitive and motor function until they can remove him from sedation.”

“When will that be?”

“They should be bringing him out of surgery momentarily, but you won’t be allowed to see him until the morning.”

“I’m staying.”

“I assumed so. I’m sure the nurses can find you a cot somewhere, but there is something I need you to do first.”

“I knew it.” Sherlock took the bag from Mycroft. “Although I’m at a loss to understand what use I could be to you, given that I’m such an international embarrassment.”

Mycroft tucked his hands in his pockets, lowered his chin and rocked onto his heels, all very satisfying indicators of discomfort. “It seems that I might have been rash to suggest your involvement in this evening’s unfortunate events. You have my sincerest apologies.”

“Apology accepted,” Sherlock countered, “Provided you can get me a cot in John’s room once he’s out of surgery. And don’t tell me you can’t. Your posh government job must be good for something, otherwise you wouldn’t still be doing it.”

Mycroft was grinding his jaw as he nodded. “Fine.”

Sherlock turned to leave, though it pained him. He needed to find somewhere to change. “What is it you need me to do?”

“I need you to speak to him.”

Shoe soles squeaked on the shiny floor as Sherlock spun back. “ _ Him _ ? You mean Victor? He’s  _ here _ ?”

“He is indeed.” Mycroft did his imitation of a human smirk. “You dealt him quite a blow to the head, it seems. The doctors insisted on keeping him overnight for observation. I have him under some observation of my own. He’s been asking for you.”

“What does he want with me?” Sherlock asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“One can only speculate,” Mycroft replied dryly. “We need him to make a statement in order to answer some of the questions outstanding in the ongoing investigation of this evening’s events. He refuses to speak to anyone else.”

“What if I refuse to speak to him?”

Mycroft exhaled very pointedly. “Do not allow your pride to endanger this inquiry.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You must have questions, Sherlock. Questions that have been sitting unanswered for nearly twenty years. Or perhaps new questions, ones you never thought would need to be asked.”

“Five minutes,” Sherlock allowed. He wouldn’t be kept away from John any longer.

* * *

The room in which Victor was being held looked identical to every other hospital room, save the heavy steel table and chairs that had been dragged in. The only light in the room was from a lamp in the corner, casting odd shadows this way and that. There were two more guards in the room, one by the door and one by the window. A lot of security for an injured captive, but Mycroft had reason to be paranoid.

Victor looked somewhat worse for wear than when Sherlock had last seen him. His head was bandaged, his eyes dark, hands cuffed and fidgeting on the table in front of him. He was dressed in blue hospital issued scrubs, which looked more like a prison jumpsuit, given his current condition. He was hunched over when Sherlock entered the room, but sat up immediately upon realising Sherlock’s arrival.

“I imagined what it would be like,” he began, before Sherlock had even sat down. “Killing, I mean. I imagined it so many times, over so many years. But it’s still so surreal- my hands, they won’t stop shaking. I’ve never felt so awake.”

“Sorry about your head,” Sherlock said, even though he most certainly was not.

“Six stitches and a mild concussion. They’ve given me some really nice drugs, though, so thanks for that.” Victor softened his eyes, relaxed the line of his shoulders. “How’s your mate? John’s his name, right?”

“He’ll live.” Sherlock clenched his fists beneath the table.  _ No thanks to you _ .

Victor sighed in what seemed to be genuine relief. “I’m glad to hear it. Really, I am, I-”

“I’m here to take your statement. For the investigation.”

Victor scoffed. “They don’t need me to  _ confess _ . Everyone there saw me kill Hurst. That was sort of the point.”

“They need to know how you did it. How you knew about the gala, how you gained access to the embassy, how-”

“How I faked my death?” Victor’s smirk was a thing of memory. “You’re the detective. I’m sure you must have a theory.”

Sherlock shrugged. “I assume you were able to throw yourself from the car before the accident, after which you made your way back to London and resumed living with your mother, subsiding off of her welfare payments.”

“How-”

“I was keeping an eye on her for a while- I stopped years ago, mind you. But I knew she was collecting unemployment insurance and disability benefits. The payments never stopped, and her address never changed, and at the time, I thought nothing of it. But she’s been dead for some time now, hasn’t she?”

Victor nodded. “When I got back, I found out that she’d moved on from booze to heroin. She was so strung out that she didn’t seem to know I was supposed to be dead, let alone care enough to tell anyone that I wasn’t. She overdosed, close to twelve years ago, now. I’d been forging her signature on report cards and permission slips since I was a kid, so doing it on welfare cheques didn’t seem like much of a leap. Got myself a fake ID, a new name, new driver’s license. Been in London this whole time, waiting until I could get to Hurst.”

“How  _ did _ you get to Hurst?”

“Worked in the hospitality business for a while- hotels, catering companies, parking valets. There’s lots of overlap in that industry, different people telling different stories- you can hear things about all kinds of rich pricks if you know who to listen to. So I made friends with everyone I could, and I listened. Heard about a party at the American embassy, hosted by some bigwig attache- Hurst. I was working part-time for a limousine company, hauling upper-class trash about. Made sure to get work the night of the gala, taking some old bird with a cane who needed help getting up the front steps. I walked right in.”

“I’m sure there was more to it than that.”

“Definitely. But it’s enough for your brother’s bloody  _ statement _ , which isn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

“What could you  _ possibly _ have to say to me?”

“That I’ve missed you.” Victor leaned across the table, and Sherlock leaned away. “And that I’m sorry. I really am. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

“Oh, really? How  _ was _ it supposed to be?” Sherlock leaned forward on his elbows. “Did you think we would meet again, that you’d turn up at my door, and I would just welcome you back into my life? As if I didn’t grieve you? As if I’d forgotten what you said to me that night, before you drove off and  _ died _ ?”

“I never stopped thinking about that night. About how much I regretted it.” Victor reached for Sherlock’s hand, but Sherlock pulled back, stung. “I never stopped thinking about you, never stopped caring. I never moved on.”

“I  _ did _ ,” Sherlock snapped. “Not for a long time. But what you and I were- it’s in the  _ past _ , Victor. It was another life. There’s nothing left of it. And even if you hadn’t killed Hurst, which I could forgive you for- what you did to John is  _ irredeemable _ .”

“I’m sorry, I am. You have no idea how sorry.” Victor was on the edge of tears- from the pain or the medication or remorse Sherlock didn’t know. “I swear, I never wanted to hurt you- but seeing you again reminded me of how much of your life I had missed. And then watching you and him, and how happy you seemed, how effortlessly he seemed to know you, like I never did- I couldn’t take it.”

Sherlock stood, slamming his hands flat on the table and leaning in close enough to see himself reflected in Victor’s terrified eyes. 

“I swear on God’s name that if John had died,” he whispered, “you wouldn’t have left that room alive.”

He stepped back into the shadows- it wasn’t until he had made it to the door that Victor spoke again.

“You really love him, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered, no more than a whisper. “I really do.”

“Does  _ he _ know that?” Victor asked, but Sherlock was already gone.

* * *

_ -4 AM- _

John had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. However long it had been, it felt like it took ages longer for him to finally and fully wake up.

He was aware of his body only in the abstract sense at first- as if he himself was a small thing floating inside the darkness of a much heavier, numb and useless vessel. He had to stumble and limp without light or direction to find his way to a window, to find some portal that would let him see beyond his confinement. After wandering for what seemed to be a thousand years, he finally found an opening in the curtain and pushed himself through it, opening his swollen eyes.

The smell hit his nose before his vision cleared enough to see- sterlie and sharp and familiar, somehow, though he had no memory of how he came to be here. He squinted on impulse, expecting his eyes to be burned by bright lights and white walls- but instead, the room around him was dark, the only light coming in under the door and through the curtains, the watery blue light of an early, rainy morning. Even in the dark, his eyes ached with the effort of keeping them open.

He shifted a little in his bed, trying to assess the state of his limbs, still heavy and slow to respond to his demands for movement. He found that the toes of his left foot would flex without difficulty- but his right foot could not be moved without stabs of pain shooting up through every nerve in his leg. His arms seemed unaffected. His head, however, was one mass of tension and throbbing agony. He tried and failed to recall what had put him in such a state. Everything before this moment was a fog, dense and cold. Only one light shone through, a single torch guiding him forward- Sherlock, hovering over him as the shadows had closed in.

Sherlock, who was now asleep in a chair beside John’s bed, leaned forward with his head resting on the mattress next to John’s hand, which he was clinging to, even in his sleep. Even in his haze of pain and confusion, John was overcome with affection, which he acted on easily, without hesitation, for perhaps the first time. He pulled his hand from beneath Sherlock’s and pushed his fingers gently through the curls that fell errantly across Sherlock’s forehead. His arm felt weak, his fingers cold, but nothing could have kept him from this.

A few moments passed before Sherlock stirred- John watched him closely, waiting for the instant when Sherlock would open his eyes, when their iridescence would catch what little light there was in the room and magnify it. Eventually his eyelids began to flutter as he came out of sleep, sighing and leaning into John’s touch. Abruptly, endearingly, he quite suddenly realised where he was and lifted his head, pulling John’s hand from his hair and taking hold of it once more.

“John,” he said simply, a thousand other things at once.

John tried to speak and found his throat was dry, tongue thick and useless in his mouth.

“H’lo,” he slurred. “W’happned?”

“They said you might experience some memory loss,” Sherlock murmured, more to himself than to John. He reached somewhere above John’s head, a soft beep as he pressed a button. “How much do you remember?”

“Hurst, killed,” John managed. “Victor- alive. Got away.”

“They’ve got him now,” Sherlock amended. “He broke into Baker Street.”

_ The front door _ , John recalled in a sudden flash of panic. “Mis’ Huds’n.”

“She’s alright. You made sure of it. Victor was waiting for me upstairs. You confronted him, and he panicked, and- and he shot you. You hit your head when you fell.”

“Ah,” John mumbled. “Makes’ense.”

“Knock knock.” There was a nurse at the door, quiet but cheerful. John braced for her to turn on the light, but she left it off, favouring instead to shine a penlight directly into his eyes, which was far, far worse.

“Sorry, love,” she apologised. “Just have to check some things. Can you tell me your name?”

“John. Watson. John Watson.”

“Good. Do you know where you are, John?”

“Hospital.”

“Yes. Do you remember what brought you here?”

“I was… shot.” The nurse was bustling around, checking his IVs and monitors. “Don’t remember. Sh’lock told me.”

“Well, you have a skull fracture, so that’s to be expected. I’m going to let your doctors know you’re awake. They’ll want to run some tests, but so far everything looks normal, considering the circumstances. I’ve brought you some ice chips, for your throat- you have some, and just try and rest.” 

She shot Sherlock a look, smiled, and then she was gone from John’s field of view, which had narrowed in on Sherlock exclusively. Sherlock held out the cup of ice chips, and john took one, sucking it into his cheek, grateful for the cool water as it trickled down his throat.

“So, they got him,” he said, voice and head clearer, helped by the ice. “Victor, I mean.”

“Yes. They have him under observation, just down the hall.”

“What?”

“After he shot you, I hit him. He had to have stitches.”

“Are you alright?”

“Am I- John, you were  _ shot _ . You have a  _ skull fracture _ . It’s not me you should be worried about.”

“I always worry about you.”

Sherlock’s only response was to smile; a small, timid thing, like a flower budding despite the cold.

He must have drifted off again after that, but he was pulled awake again by the voices of doctors, examining him, asking him questions ( _ How are you feeling? Sore _ ), explaining the extent of his injuries and the recovery process, all things John himself had done more times than he would care to count. He was awake through most of it, though it was difficult to focus, due in part to the nature of his injury- but also because Sherlock held his hand through all of it, and that single point of contact was enough to keep John’s mind well and truly ignorant of anything else in a considerable radius.

They wheeled him out for tests, another x-ray and MRI, for which Sherlock would be absent. The fatigue was his companion, and he drifted in and out of consciousness through the entire battery of tests. He was awake when the nurse brought him back to his room, but Sherlock wasn’t- he was stretched on a cot in the corner of the room, snoring softly. John’s return didn’t stir him, much to John’s relief- he knew better than anyone how pigheaded Sherlock could be about sleeping when he thought he should be awake.

John himself fell asleep soon after, his breathing falling easily in time with Sherlock’s. He knew the doctors would be waking him again soon, every few hours to check for brain damage- he’d been told not to try and stay awake in the hours between, and he knew that sleep was the body’s best way of healing itself. Still, he couldn’t help but study the shape of Sherlock’s face, the turn of his cheek in the dimness of the room- he tried to watch for as long as he could, until he fell under the blanket of darkness once more.

* * *

_ -6 AM- _

The sun was starting to rise over London- John’s head was sore, but mending well according to the doctors. Sherlock was telling him in broad strokes about Mycroft’s sins and his conversation with Victor in the room down the hall. It was unusual for him to use so little detail, but John wasn’t going to press the issue, not with all Sherlock had been through in the past several hours.

“So that’s it, then?” he asked, when Sherlock finished his story. “What’s going to happen to him now?”

“Oh, I assume they’ll put him in some deep, dark hole for the rest of his life, which he’ll probably spend hating me,” Sherlock said, dismissive.

“I’m sorry,” John told him.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

“This whole thing must be difficult for you. Thinking Victor was dead, and then getting him back, only for all this to happen- I’m sorry you had to choose to protect me. I’m sorry I put you in that position.”

“John,” Sherlock said, “don’t be stupid.” He said it so matter-of-factly, the way he always did when John had said something he found foolish. “Victor is as dead to me now as he was at this time yesterday. Even if he hadn’t just become a murder, even if he hadn’t tried to kill you-”

Sherlock was breathing heavily, gesturing wildly. John reached up and caught his hand in midair, pulling it down to his chest.

“Sherlock, look at me. I’m alive. I’m going to be alright.”

“I thought he’d killed you,” Sherlock murmured. “When you fell- the sound your head made when it hit- you were lying so still, and I thought you were dead. If you had been, I would have killed him.”

“Sherlock-”

Sherlock sniffed a little, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve. He looked years younger in the soft light, with tears in his eyes. Young, vulnerable.

“You’re right,” he whispered after a few minutes of silence, just as John had begun to drift off again. “You’re alive. You’re going to be alright.”

John’s last waking thought was of how terrifying it must be- to know so many things in one’s head and not be sure of them in one’s heart.

* * *

_ -8 AM- _

It was daylight this time, when John opened his eyes.

Sherlock was still next to him, alert, once again watching the doctors with hawkish intensity as they gathered their information and determined that John was still doing well and showed no signs of infection or permanent brain damage. And then they were gone again, and John was left with the sunlight streaming in, picking out the hints of auburn in Sherlock’s hair and lighting his eyes up the colour of the Caribbean ocean. It was enough to keep John wide awake for a few minutes longer than usual- and when he felt sleep creeping in on him, he was more frustrated than ever that his body was falling behind.

“Tell me something,” he said.

“Something in particular?” Sherlock asked.

“Anything,” John answered, closing his eyes. The sun was still burning behind his eyelids. “Anything.”

“Sherlock isn’t actually my first name,” Sherlock told him. “It’s William. William Sherlock Scott Holmes.”

John scrunched his nose, laughing a little. “You’re not a William. Definitely not a Scott.”

"You're one to talk, Hamish."

"How did you-"

"My brother runs the government," Sherlock reminded him. "I'm sorry. You were always so evasive about it, I was curious."

"I suppose I'll forgive you eventually." John smiled sleepily.

There were several moments of silence after that, expectant, like Sherlock was waiting for something- perhaps for John to fall asleep, perhaps for his courage to build.

“In the cab last night, you asked me if I ever found love again, after Victor. And I told you that I did. What I didn’t say then was that it was you. I found you.”

John was teetering on the edge of sleep, and for a moment, he couldn’t be sure that the words coming out of Sherlock’s mouth weren’t a dream.

“I’m in love with you, John Watson,” Sherlock whispered, and John felt as if he had left his body entirely. His faculties of speech had been stolen away, and he could do nothing but smile as he fell back asleep.

* * *

_ -10 AM- _

Finally, when it was determined that John was in no danger of further injury, the doctors allowed him to get out of bed.

He couldn’t walk, of course, what with his leg feeling like it had a hole blown through it, but the nurse was very kind to wheel him to the loo, where he could brush his teeth and wash his face and have a proper shave. The sight in the mirror wasn’t a pretty one- his eyes were bruised, sunken, his lips dry and chapped. He was sure his hair would be a nightmare, shaved down and mussed up underneath the bandages. It certainly wasn’t the worst he had ever looked. He could think of times he’d been worse off, though not that many.

Mostly, he was only thinking of Sherlock, who had been absent when John had woken. He’d been worried, until one of the nurses had assured him that Sherlock had merely gone down to the cafeteria for some food, which of course was more worrisome still. Sherlock eating, and willingly, and hospital food- it could only mean that he was avoiding John, that he regretted what he said, that he was worried about John not saying it back.

John’s heart fluttered when he thought of those words passing Sherlock’s lips- he’d woken up thinking about it, probably hadn’t stopped thinking about it the entire time he’d been asleep. He’d cut himself shaving because he couldn’t stop thinking about it. And now Sherlock had run off. And John really couldn’t blame him. Being in love hadn’t gone so well for him, historically speaking. But John just wanted a chance to put an end to that streak of bad luck.

Much to John’s relief, Sherlock reappeared just as John was getting back into bed. He had a styrofoam cup in one hand, sipping whatever was in it with a look of distaste, meaning he could only be drinking it out of necessity. John assumed it was burnt coffee, going by the smell that wafted toward him a few moments later.

“There you are,” he said, as Sherlock returned to his post beside the bed. “You were gone when I woke up. I thought you might be avoiding me.”

“Why would I be avoiding you?” Sherlock asked, not quite looking John in the eye.

“Oh, no reason.” And then, just because he was admittedly a bit of a bastard, he waited until Sherlock was in the middle of drinking his coffee before he said,

“I’m in love with you too, by the way. In case it wasn’t obvious.”

Sherlock coughed horribly, choking as he put the cup down. 

“It wasn’t,” he wheezed, but he was smiling.

“I killed a man to save you,” John pointed out.

“That wasn’t even two days after we met.”

“Yeah.”

Sherlock blinked. “That long?”

John shrugged as best as he was able. “Only if you don’t believe in love at first sight. And even then, you could still make a case for-”

And then Sherlock was kissing him, tentatively at first, until John kissed him back, cupping Sherlock’s jaw and stroking a thumb across his cheekbone. Sherlock kissed him harder, then, humming against John’s lips and tilting his head, gripping the front of John’s hospital gown.

“Of course, you waited to tell me until you thought I was asleep,” John said.

“I did not.” Sherlock pouted.

“Sherlock, love, it’s alright.” And Christ, if that was how Sherlock was going to look at him anytime he called him love, he’d never call him anything else. “I just can’t believe it took us this long.”

“I wish I’d told you sooner,” Sherlock confessed. “I wished it hadn’t taken you almost dying for me to admit it.”

“I’d do it all over again,” John told him. “I’d take another bullet in a heartbeat if I got to hear you say it.”

“I love you,” Sherlock whispered, and kissed him again, tenderly. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Please don’t  _ ever _ get shot again.”

John laughed, closing his eyes as Sherlock rested his head on John’s chest. “I’ll do my best, love,” he promised, placing a kiss in Sherlock’s curls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter extra points if you can guess what it's for *wiNK WINK*


	7. VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Although,” Sherlock continued, “it’s perfectly natural that you would be, given how many denials you’ve made over the years.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO. I swear to God I am going to finish this thing, but another small arc for this story has wormed its way into my brain, so bear with me.

- _ Three Weeks Later _ -

_ EMBASSY ASSASSIN ON TRIAL: HEAR ABOUT THE HEARING _

John paused in front of the newsstand, leaning on his cane to look closer at the headline that had caught his eye. The picture below it was one from yesterday; Victor Trevor in an orange jumpsuit and shackles, being led up the steps of the Royal Courts. He had his head turned, looking straight into the camera with an air of resignation, and yet John couldn’t help but think that Victor must be enjoying this too, somehow.

Of course, he already knew the results of the aforementioned hearing- Victor Trevor was going to trial. The Crown’s case against him was iron-clad; he’d killed a top government official in a room full of security cameras and credible witnesses. They should just send him up for life right now and save themselves the paperwork, as far as John was concerned.

He and Sherlock would be called to testify, of course. It was less complicated for John, now that he knew the history. And it would be less painful for Sherlock, now that the history had been put to rest. Still, John didn’t like it. Sherlock and Victor’s shared past would no doubt come to light. People would talk. People were cruel. And even if Sherlock claimed not to be bothered by it, John wouldn’t stand for anyone dragging Sherlock’s name through the mud. If John had been protective of Sherlock before all of this- now he was unstoppable.

John pulled himself away from this train of thought and continued down the street- he was relieved to be walking, even if it was with a cane. At least his limp was real this time. Using the cane again made him feel younger, oddly enough- a little nostalgic for the early days of knowing Sherlock, how every moment was new and wild and impossibly thrilling. But there was nothing he would trade for the way he knew Sherlock now.

John smiled as he walked on, dialing Sherlock on his phone. It went straight to voicemail. He shrugged to himself- Sherlock was probably in the middle of an experiment. Experiments were about all he could do, what with John not yet being medically cleared to shag his brains out. John, who had no such scientific hobbies, had slowly been going insane.

When he got to the front door of 221b, there was a bundle of mail stuffed in the slot. He pulled it out and idly flipped through it as he went inside, habitually sorting theirs from Mrs. Hudson’s- and then he saw it.

_ EMBASSY ASSASSIN UNMASKED: THE SORDID LIFE STORY OF VICTOR TREVOR _

It was the cover of one of Mrs. Hudson’s magazines- her guilty pleasure, as she called them. Tabloids and the like, most of it speculation, something for her to scoff at and chat about whenever she came upstairs to dust and tidy and remind them that she was  _ not _ their housekeeper.

The headline worried John, so much so that he carried the magazine upstairs with him to the flat, staring at the cover until he found himself standing in the kitchen doorway.

Sherlock, sat at the kitchen island, didn’t look up. He was surrounded by test tubes and beakers, brow furrowed and eyes pressed to the viewfinder of his microscope as he dropped red liquid- blood, probably- into a petri dish. He continued to not look up, even as John shuffled into the room, mumbling a greeting.

“Did you see this?” John held up the magazine. “Victor is all over the papers.”

Sherlock did look up then, and rolled his eyes. “No comment.”

“Yeah, you’d better keep practicing that one, you’re going to be saying it a lot.” John tossed the mail onto the bench.

“I thought you’d be home sooner,” Sherlock said, still focused on his experiment. Despite this apparent lack of interest, John took the statement as a resounding  _ I missed you _ , and felt a smile creep onto his face.

“I did call.”

“My phone has been ringing incessantly all day.” Sherlock gestured in the direction of his armchair. “I turned it off.”

John crossed the room, plucking the phone from under a cushion and turning it back on. “What if something had happened? What if Lestrade needed you? Or Mycroft?”

“If Lestrade needed me, he would just pop in. And I don’t much care what Mycroft needs. He can piss off.”

“So can the press,” John grumbled, scrolling through the two-dozen calls Sherlock had missed. “You have seventeen voicemails. My guess is they’re from reporters. Why would Mycroft let any of this be public? Doesn’t the Home Office have some sort of covert procedure for situations like this?”

Sherlock waved his hand dismissively. “Who knows why Mycroft does anything? The decision was most likely made by his superiors.”

“Hm.” John pocketed Sherlock’s phone, crossing the room back towards him. “Superiors. Didn’t know Mycroft had those.”

Sherlock let out a breath through his nose- raucous laughter by his standards. He sucked that breath back in shortly thereafter, when John dropped a kiss on the side of his neck, leaning over his shoulder to see what Sherlock was doing- ostensibly. More likely he was attempting to disrupt it.

“What are you working on?” he asked, a rumble in his throat, voice low and warm in Sherlock’s ear.

“I am testing the reaction of enzymes in human blood to various fungal particles, trying to determine the rate at which the enzymes become broken down and digested.”

“Fascinating.” John said this as if he meant it, but his hands continued to wander, undeterred. He kissed Sherlock’s neck again, gripping his waist, pulling his shirt loose from where it was tucked into his trousers.

“It’s quite delicate work,” Sherlock told him, determined not to succumb to the temptation he was feeling. “You’re a bit of a distraction, you know.”

“I’m flattered.”

Despite Sherlock’s staunch determination to the contrary, he found himself melting back into John’s embrace, shivering as John’s hands slid over his rib cage, up his chest, beginning to work open the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt- when his pocket started buzzing. John sighed, stepping away and digging Sherlock’s phone out of his pocket.

“Hello, yes, you’ve reached Sherlock Holmes’s phone... no, he’s not available at the moment… no, he won’t be available for quite some time, I’m afraid. Never, in fact. Please, don’t call again.” He hung up, huffing something under his breath about vultures, and having to fight them off with pointy sticks.

“My hero,” Sherlock murmured, smiling as John’s arms wrapped around him once more, this time in a simple and reassuring embrace. Still, Sherlock could feel the heat between them, the tension of the unexplored, the pull of the unanswered, the desire that current circumstances continued to deny the culmination of.

Wanting John from afar had been painful; wanting him from this close was torture. He knew that the waiting would be over soon, but for now, the road ahead seemed endless.

* * *

- _ One Week Later _ -

John’s first day back at work had been dreadfully uneventful- an endless parade of sore throats and runny noses- he was gasping for breath by the time four o’clock came around. The day was chilly but bright, and John had never been so glad for the fresh air; his leg felt better than ever as he strolled to the tube station. He was thinking about dinner, wondering if they needed anything from the shops, when his phone rang. He answered it without so much as glancing at the caller ID, a grave mistake that he would very soon regret.

“Hullo, love. Do we need milk? Or eggs? I’m on my way home, I can stop off at-”

“Doctor Watson? Sorry, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. My name’s Kitty Riley, I write for the-”

John’s blood ran ice-cold. “Yeah, I know who you are.” She’d written one too many pieces about Sherlock for her gossip rag, none of them complimentary. That wasn’t the problem in and of itself- the problem was her constant speculation, her obvious obsession, and her disregard for truth and decency. It was the principle of the thing, really.

“So, what is it?” John asked, voice measured and careful. “You haven’t been able to get through to Sherlock, so you’re harassing me, now?”

“Not at all,” she replied coquettishly. “Just confirming a hunch. Ta.”

And the line went dead.

John just stood there, on the pavement, staring at his phone, the crowd streaming and swimming around him, staring at his phone with a blank face and a growing sense of dread.

“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit.”

* * *

Sherlock was on his laptop, keys clacking at a frantic pace. John took the time to hang up his jacket, put his things away and take his shoes off, all while trying to form a sentence to explain what had just happened- and what might be happening very soon. He sat down in his chair, sighing as he watched Sherlock type, waiting for a moment that might never come on its own.

“Kitty Reilly’s been writing again,” Sherlock said, apropos of nothing, jarring John out of his own thoughts.

“She- what?”

“Well, if you can call it writing.” Sherlock closed his laptop, thumbing at his phone for a moment, then holding it up so John could see. “She posted a series of tweets two hours ago, all of them alleging that I was involved in a sexual relationship with Victor, going on to cast aspersions on my character and imply that I had something to do with his crimes.”

“Where did she get that idea?”

Sherlock shrugged. “My former schoolmates, most likely. They never needed a reason to gossip about me. They had the relationship bit right, but the rest of it is just speculation.”

“She’ll find out about us next.” John didn’t even mean to say it. Didn’t even realise he’d said it at all, in fact, until he heard Sherlock scoff in response.

“Doubtful. She’s incapable of original thought- she’ll only write about it if someone tells her, and you and I are the only ones who know.”

“Sherlock,” John said. “She called me, just now, on my way home from work. I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t look at the number- I answered it, thinking it was you. That may have given her the idea.”

He’d expected Sherlock to react, somehow- get angry, get quiet- but it was just as if nothing had happened. 

“You’re worried,” Sherlock observed.

“A little,: John admitted. “You aren’t?”

“It doesn’t matter to me what people say, so I’m not concerned at all,” Sherlock protested. John knew this to be categorically false, of course, but he said nothing.

“Although,” Sherlock continued, “it’s perfectly natural that you would be, given how many denials you’ve made over the years.”

“I’m not ashamed, if that’s what you’re implying.’ John watched incredulously as Sherlock stood, distancing himself, pulling his dressing gown tightly around his body as he sulked over to the window. “I was concerned because I didn’t know how you would react. And I felt like an idiot.”

“Yes, well.” It was then that Sherlock’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, eyes barely scanning the text message before he was out of the room, presumably to go and get dressed.

“Lestrade needs us at a crime scene,” he said as he went.

And just like that, the conversation was over.

* * *

The case was this- young man, found dead in his flat, doors and windows all locked from the inside. Apparent strangulation, which ruled out suicide, but no indications od a robbery- victim’s phone, wallet, laptop all still present. A typical locked room murder, which was why John didn’t think Sherlock would give it his attention.

“Sherlock, thanks for coming.” Lestrade held the front door open as they entered. “Hullo, John, how are you?”

“I’m doing well, Greg, thanks.” John climbed the front steps easily, following Sherlock’s sweeping stride into the flat.

The body was in the sitting room, sprawled in an armchair, a fresh ring of bruises already forming around his neck. The television was smashed, coffee table overturned, magazines and books strewn about the rug. Donovan was standing by the front window, notepad in hand. She glanced up at the two of them, and her perpetual frown deepened a little.

“Oh, look,” she said to Anderson, who was crouched next to the body. “Doctor Watson and the freak.”

“Ah. Hello, Sally,” Sherlock responded with one of those bright, eerie smiles. “I was hoping that my extended absence might have allowed you to come up with something new, but alas, I have clearly overestimated your creativity.” He circled the body as he said this, surveying the scene, examining all corners of the room. “When was he found?”

“About an hour ago, by the next door neighbour.” Lestrade gestured to his left. “The flats have a shared wall. The neighbour heard an argument, raised voices and the like, followed by a sudden silence. He came over to see if everything was alright- the door was locked, but he could see the victim through the window, so he called an ambulance.”

Sherlock nodded. “John, can you estimate the time of death?”

“Well, it’s impossible to be definitive just by looking, but not long, I’d say. He’s still got some colour left, and it doesn’t appear that rigor mortis has fully set in. He was likely killed not long before he was found. Been dead seventy, ninety minutes, maybe?”

Lestrade looked at Anderson, who shrugged. “He’s not wrong, but-”

Sherlock clapped once, delighted. “Excellent! Just as I suspected.”

It was then that John realised how quietly Sherlock was speaking, how much he was glancing upward.

“I’ll be needing this for just a moment, thank-you.” Sherlock snatched the notepad and pen from Donovan’s hands. She looked to Lestrade, stunned and indignant- Lestrade merely shrugged.

“Hm, yes, precisely.” Sherlock was mumbling to himself as he paced in circles around the body, scribbling feverishly before shoving the notepad in Lestrade’s face. John leaned over to read it as well, eagerly awaiting the solution.

_ This is an old house. The attic crawlspace will have an access hatch, probably in the bedroom ceiling, or the hallway. Killer is hiding up there, waiting until the police leave to make his escape. _

“Brilliant, as always,” John whispered. “Absolutely incredible.”

Sherlock turned his head slightly, to hide the faint blush on his cheeks.

“Well,” he decreed aloud, looking up at the ceiling once more, “who knows what happened here. I’d say the killer is long gone by now. Nothing more for me to do here. Good evening.” He gestured to the hallway and stepped out of Lestrade’s path, not waiting to see if he was right before he left the flat altogether.

John followed him into the cool night air, his breath clouding around him as he joined Sherlock on the wet pavement out front. The both of them stood in comfortable silence until the shouting started from inside the house, followed by several thuds and even more shouting.

Sherlock was looking very pleased with himself when Lestrade emerged a moment later, followed closely by Donovan, two constables, and a young man in handcuffs. Anderson came out shortly after, peeling his gloves off and shaking his head.

“Was the hatch in the bedroom or the hallway?” Sherlock asked smugly, as the two officers loaded the culprit into a waiting car.

“Bedroom,” Anderson told him, scowling.

“You two get him back to the Yard, have him processed and waiting in interrogation. I’ll be along shortly.” Lestrade looked to Donovan and Anderson. “You two can handle things here, yeah?”

“Sure, boss.”

“Great. Thanks for the help, Sherlock. John.”

“‘Night,” John said, watching Lestrade get into his car and drive away. “Well, I think you might have broken your personal record for quickest solve,” he told Sherlock.

“ _ Nope _ ,” Sherlock replied, popping the  _ p _ . “The Cheshire West burglary, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. The cat ate the old lady’s diamonds and died in the garage. A caper for the ages.”

“Well, good solve, freak.” Donovan stomped over, taking her notepad and pen back. “I’ve always wondered where you got your knack for detective work.” She smirked. “I used to think you were just born that way, but now I think maybe you learned it from your psychopath ex-boyfriend.”

Sherlock went very still, his eyes wide. He had no reply- John could see all of his thoughts grinding to a halt.

“But then again,” Donovan continued, as Anderson sniggered in the background, “it takes one to know one. Maybe you didn’t learn it from him. Maybe he learned it from  _ you _ .”

All John saw was red. He put himself in front of Sherlock, not feeling shorter for once, pulling himself up to his full height and staring directly into Donovan’s eyes, throwing all the daggers he could.

“If I ever hear so much as a rumour of you saying anything like that, to anyone, ever again,” he said, “I will make it my personal mission in life to see that your career is  _ over _ . You won’t even get work as a crossing guard once I’m through with you.” He pointed over her shoulder, at Anderson. “Same goes for you. You’ll end up in a basement lab somewhere, doing autopsies on lab mice for the next twenty years.”

It didn’t matter if he could deliver on the threat or not. The look of abject terror on Donovan’s face was good enough for him.

“I-” she stammered, “I don’t think-”

“Clearly.” John grabbed Sherlock’s hand, pulling him away without another word.


	8. VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You defended me.” Sherlock looked at him, then, with a look John hadn’t seen since that night while he was bleeding out on the kitchen floor. “No one’s ever defended me. No one. Not even him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a few months. Feels like three years. Pandemic time is fucked up.

_ There is a section of hallway in the West wing of the North building that runs parallel to the main artery of classrooms and faculty offices- this hallway is known to be a shortcut between the fifth year history and chemistry classrooms, and yet it remains almost consistently empty. Most of the students favour their few minutes of socialization over the efficiency of this alternate route, preferring to take the longer path for the sake of shouting and shoving and acting altogether obnoxious. _

_ Sherlock takes the shortcut whenever he can, never eager to spend time with his classmates if he can at all help it. He finds respite in his few minutes of solitude; he basks in the silence, in the light shining through the windows, floating waves of dust, the neat stacks of file boxes piled up against walls. There is an order here, a peace, and he doesn’t realise how important that peace is until the day it first becomes disrupted. _

_ He has just left history class- he has five minutes to arrive at chemistry, and he finds himself even more excited than usual- he has several extracurricular experiments that are reaching their most interesting stages of development, and he wants all the time he can get before class to check on their progress. _

_ He elbows his way past several boys, keeping his head down as he makes his way to the shortcut, when a familiar presence appears at his shoulder. _

_ “Where are you running to?” Victor says quietly in Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock shouldn’t be able to hear him over all the noise, but he would know Victor’s voice if he were deaf- as illogical and fanciful as he knows that must seem. _

_ He doesn’t answer Victor’s question- instead he peels off from the crowd, breaking off into the deserted hallway, Victor following him without a moment’s hesitation. Sherlock doesn’t stop until Victor stops him, blocking his path with all the grace of a dancer, pulling Sherlock in and kissing him easily. There isn’t a cell in Sherlock’s body that wants to resist, and so he melts into the embrace, dropping his books on the floor in a haphazard pile as he reaches up to tangle his fingers in Victor’s hair. _

_ “I have to get to class,” he whispers, some indeterminable amount of time later, returning to himself, surfacing, when Victor pulls back to softly kiss the side of his face, his neck. _

_ “You have five minutes,” Victor whispers back. _

_ It’s then that a cascade of footfalls makes itself known, a group of maybe four or five boys rounding the corner. Victor hears before Sherlock does, and jumps away like he’s been burned. Sherlock swipes at his mouth, willing the blood in his cheeks to go down, crouching to gather his books as the group approaches. _

_ “Oi, what’s up, freak?” This from the ringleader, a philistine named Joseph, who always seems to catch Sherlock at the worst of moments. Sherlock’s spine stiffens, and he quickly stands, moving himself into a more defensible position. _

_ “Trevor, what are you doing back here?” one of the boys says. Victor shrugs. _

_ “Shortcut.” _

_ Sherlock has never envied any of his peers- has never envied their popularity, their athletic aptitude, their relationships- but he feels a twinge of it now, toward Victor, his natural ability to seamlessly move through the social barriers that Sherlock himself has found to be eternally impassable. _

_ Josiah knocks the books back out of Sherlock’s hands, and Sherlock can’t help but blush again when Victor doesn’t stoop to help him, grits his teeth as the boys walk past, stepping on his papers, smiling crooked smiles, mouths full of vile insults.  _

_ “Need a hand, Sherlie?” Josiah taunts, sticking his tongue out, egregiously childish. “Come on, Trevor.” _

_ Victor pauses a moment, not long enough, and shrugs at Sherlock, looking down at him, down on him. Sherlock holds his gaze, but not tightly enough, and before long, Victor has turned away. _

* * *

The cab ride home was quiet.

When John looked over at Sherlock, he saw that Sherlock’s face was red, his eyes glistening. He was still holding John’s hand- clinging to it, in fact.

“Are you alright?”

Sherlock only blinked, tears welling up further.

“Sherlock, love, I’m sorry-”

“Sorry?” Why?”

“For embarrassing you.”

“You  _ defended _ me.” Sherlock looked at him, then, with a look John hadn’t seen since that night while he was bleeding out on the kitchen floor. “No one’s ever defended me. No one. Not even him.”

John really wished he’d shot Victor Trevor when he’d had the chance.

“About earlier,” John said, “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I could never be ashamed of that. But I’m a little protective, if you’ve noticed, and I was upset with myself that I’d done something that might hurt you.”

The tears Sherlock was holding back had started to flow. “My apologies, John. I suppose I’m not accustomed to being around people who truly have my best interests at heart.”

John really,  _ really _ wished he could shoot Victor right now. And Mycroft, too, while he was at it.

“I forgive you.” John kissed Sherlock’s palm. “Christ, of course I forgive you. I’m on your side, Sherlock, always. I’ll threaten as many Donovans and Andersons as I have to.”

Sherlock laughed a little, wiping at his face with the back of his free hand.

“I don’t know if it’ll work, though,” John continued, trying to lighten the mood. “Those two probably aren’t all that afraid of me. I’m no one important.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. You’re the most important person I’ve ever met.”

John leaned over and kissed Sherlock’s temple. “Of course, if they do try anything, I’ll just call Myrcroft.”

“Mycroft?”

“Well, the last time we did him a favour, I nearly died. I think he owes me.”

Sherlock laughed softly and put his head on John’s shoulder. “And they say  _ I’m _ a genius.”

* * *

They’d made it inside, but barely got up to the landing before Sherlock was grabbing John and kissing him soundly, thoroughly, desperately. John stiffened in surprise, but quickly gave himself over, backing Sherlock against the nearest wall. Sherlock hummed into the kiss as John stroked his face, letting his cane clatter to the floor.

There was a familiar desire rising up in Sherlock’s chest, one that he no longer attempted to suppress. He gave himself over completely, clawing at John’s shoulders, ridding him of his jacket, shrugging out of his own coat. It was no easy feat, what with John’s hands on his hips, pinning him to the wall while he kissed Sherlock senseless.

A gasp and a shiver raked through Sherlock’s body when John tore his mouth away, as if it pained him, only for his lips to leave a burning trail down Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock tilted his head back, laying himself bare for John’s advances, murmuring affirmations and pleas as John deftly slipped open the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt, mouth following his fingertips to Sherlock’s collarbones, his chest.

“Sherlock,” John whispered, and Sherlock felt the heat of his own name soaking into his skin, just over his heart. The reverence with which John said it, the quiet in its wake- it was enough to make Sherlock’s knees go weak. He slid his hands up John’s arms, his shoulders, cradling John’s head in his hands and touching the scar- just a ridge now, under close-cropped hair, but Sherlock could feel the phantom warmth of blood, the cold kitchen floor under his knees.

“Sherlock?” John asked, lifting his head, catching Sherlock’s stare and pulling it back down from outer space. "Do you want me to stop? If it's too much-"

This set off alarm bells, ringing deafening in Sherlock’s skull, resounding, clanging chaos.

“No,” he exclaimed, taking fistfuls of John’s jumper, pulling him as close as nature would allow. “It’s not too much- it’s not  _ enough _ . It’s never enough.”

John kissed him once, softly, smoothing back errant curls from Sherlock’s forehead. “If you want to wait-”

Sherlock kissed him back, harder, urgent. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for you, John Watson.”

Even in the dark of the stairwell, Sherlock could see John’s face go red, his neck. His eyes glanced off of Sherlock, fell away, and a small, timid smile appeared on his lips.

“Well, alright then.”

* * *

After that, the moments that passed began to blur, each one bleeding long into the next. They slipped like cold raindrops through Sherlock’s fingers; he tried to hold onto them, commit them to memory, but everything was so surreal that he could feel himself getting lost to John’s voice, his touch. This was a dream come awake- one hundred thousand fantasies made manifest.

Minutes, but what could have been hours later, Sherlock was sprawled on the bed, stripped to the waist, having lost his shoes and not being sure when or how he had done so. All that mattered now was that John was there, kneeling over him, working his hand between their bodies to pop the button on Sherlock’s trousers while he bit a bruise into the hollow space above Sherlock’s collarbone. Sherlock hissed and moaned in encouragement, pouting a little when John pulled away to look down at him.

“Gorgeous,” John remarked. Sherlock felt his face burning, but he deflected with a smirk.

“You’re not so bad yourself.” He reached up and pulled his hands through John’s hair, mussing it thoroughly. Ever since the incident, when the back of his head had been shaved for surgery, John had been wearing his hair in a crew cut- sheared close on the sides but a little longer on top. This hairstyle had been the source of endless fantasies for Sherlock in the past few weeks. It must have been close to how John had worn it when he was younger, before Sherlock had known him. A little younger then, leaner, fewer scars. But the same heart. The same hands.

There’d been one too many daydreams of meeting John back then, perhaps in a pub; John in fatigues, on furlough with his army friends, carrying on casual conversation with them while eyeing Sherlock from across the darkened room, his intent clear in his eyes. Disappearing to the men’s room, knowing John would follow, crowd him into a stall and force Sherlock to his knees. Or take him against the wall, perhaps, never getting out of uniform.

Of course, none of that was comparable to this moment, this reality- that John loved him, that John wanted him, that John  _ knew _ him.

Sherlock’s cold hands pushed under John’s jumper and the vest underneath, skimming up warm skin and pulling the layers of clothing free from John’s body. He sat up as he did it, pushing John pack and swinging one leg over him, settling in his lap, careful not to put weight on John’s injured leg.

John gasped when Sherlock’s fingertips went right to the starburst of scar tissue that marred his shoulder. Sherlock traced the shape of it, slowly, methodically, focus narrowed to a hairpin point. John held still and held his breath, struck speechless by this affection. When Sherlock kissed the scar a moment later, a noise left John’s mouth that even he hadn’t expected- something like a wounded animal, maybe, a wounded man.

“John?” Sherlock listed his head. “Is this alright?”

“It’s fine,” John said, truthfully. “More than fine, but you really don’t have to-”

“I really do.” Sherlock kissed the scar again, and John relaxed a little into the touch. “It’s a part of you.” He kissed his way slowly down John’s chest, mapping John’s ribs with his hands.

“I’ve studied you, John Watson. I have been since I met you. Halls upon halls in my mind, dedicated to you- your eyes, your voice, your hands. But there have always been empty corners, pieces missing. I’ve been aching to commit the rest of you to memory.”

John was so transfixed by Sherlock’s mouth and the words coming out of it that he didn’t even notice Sherlock pulling his belt free of its loops- not until he heard it hit the floor with a clunk. 

This was enough to break John out of his trance- he seized Sherlock by the hips, lifting him up just as he pushed him back, leaving him spread on his back across the bed once again. John wasted no time getting out of his own jeans and pants before divesting Sherlock of his remaining clothing. And then they were naked, the both of them, John kneeling between Sherlock’s legs, knocked breathless by the sight before him.

Sherlock was blushing, from the tops of his cheekbones to the center of his chest, which was rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths. John's eyes followed a soft, thin trail of hair that began below Sherlock's navel, darker and curling as it got lower- until John's eyes landed on Sherlock's cock. It was a little like the rest of him- longer than it was thick, hard and flushed an even darker pink than Sherlock's face.

John braced his hands on the bed, blanketing himself over Sherlock’s body, skin-to-skin, heat-to-heat. Sherlock gasped and moaned into his mouth when John kissed him, clutching John’s shoulders and spreading his legs wider, desperate for any sort of friction.

"Lube," John said quickly, between kisses. " _ Please _ tell me we have some."

"Nightstand, second drawer."

John felt instantly too cold as he moved away from Sherlock, leaning back across the bed to reach for the nightstand drawer. He shivered and winced at the stretching of the muscles in his injured leg, but he ignored it in favour of the arousal he felt when he looked back at Sherlock, who had leaned up on his elbows and was studying John with darkened eyes, hair falling haphazardly across his forehead.

"Your leg," he pointed out, eyeing John with concern, even as John settled back between his legs, lube in hand. "Your doctors haven't cleared you-"

"I  _ am _ a doctor." John hooked his hands behind Sherlock's knees, pulling him closer, knocking him onto his back once again. He leaned forward, caging Sherlock in. "And it's my medical opinion that if I don't get to fuck you right now, I might actually die."

Sherlock surged forward, catching John’s mouth in a sudden and desirous kiss.

“Well, then,” he said a moment later, lips barely brushing John’s as he spoke, “you’d better get on with it, Doctor Watson.”

John slicked his fingers, nudging Sherlock’s legs apart as he moved in close to his body. Sherlock felt the callus on John’s left thumb stroking the inside of his thigh, just before the first stretch of John’s finger pushing gently inside of him. He gasped a little but leaned into the touch, letting himself fall backward, bending his knees upward, lifting his hips, anything to let John get the best angle.

“You were ready for me,” John remarked, adding a second finger alongside the first.

Sherlock groaned in pleasure. “I may have been thinking of you this afternoon, while you were at work. I may have been thinking of you yesterday as well. And the day before that. And of course by thinking of you, I mean-”

When John wrapped his hand around Sherlock’s cock, stroking it in time with the thrust of his fingers, Sherlock let out what he was sure was the most embarrassing sound he’d ever made; It was somewhere between a yelp and a whimper, if such a thing was even possible. He reflexively clapped a hand over his mouth, stifling the continuous stream of moans that wanted to escape. Every second of John’s prolonged touch was heaven, was torture. He never wanted it to end- but it still wasn’t enough.

“Don’t keep quiet,” John said, gently, although it had the edge of an order to it. “I want to hear you.”

Sherlock obliged, lowering his hand, only to cry out when John crooked his fingers, sending white sparks flying at the corners of Sherlock’s vision. He continued to curse under his breath; the discomfort had faded, and all that was left was the promise of what was to come.

“Ah, John, please, I-”

He was so close- any longer, and he would fall apart completely. But then John pulled back suddenly, and that was far worse. Sherlock reached out blindly, pulling John down on top of him, kissing him desperately, mouth and teeth and tongue. John returned the kiss with equal fervour, breaking away only when breathing became an absolute necessity.

“Condoms? John huffed, already sitting up, moving toward the nightstand. Sherlock grabbed his wrist.

“I’m clean,” he said. “I haven’t been with anyone since before I met you. And after- after I met you, I never wanted anyone else.”

John had had so many blood tests lately, he would know if he had anything. It wasn’t as if he’d had sex at all in recent months. And there was Sherlock, naked beneath him, begging-

“Please, John. I want to feel you. I  _ need _ to.”

How could he ever resist?

John slipped out of Sherlock’s arms, snatching a pillow to prop up Sherlock’s hips. He slicked himself up, shivering at his own touch before lining himself up and slowly, carefully sliding his cock into Sherlock’s body, biting his lip until he tasted blood. Sherlock was gripping white-knuckled to the sheets, muttering curses and affirmations under his breath. It was taking John all of this concentration and will-power not to push forward, to just hold still and allow Sherlock time to adjust.

It was several seconds before either of them moved or spoke, caught up in the unreality of the moment, the stillness and the darkness surrounding them.

Sherlock took John’s hand, throwing him off balance, inadvertently causing his hips to shift. Sherlock’s breath hitched, and John gasped.

“Keep going,” Sherlock said. “I’m not going to break.”

_ I might _ , John thought, pulling back, only to thrust forward again, beginning a slow and shallow rhythm.

True to his word, Sherlock remained intact, though his cheeks were redder now than John had ever seen them. He kept his fingers laced with John’s while his free hand rested on his own chest, almost shaking. His cock was laid across his stomach, leaking now, rocking with John’s every move.

John took hold of Sherlock’s thigh, lifting it a little, canting his hips and fucking Sherlock at a different angle. Sherlock cried out, and the hand on his chest twitched again.

“You can touch yourself if you’d like,” John told him.

“Fuck,” Sherlock replied succinctly. “I could, but then it would be over.”

John began to pick up the pace, moving to deeper thrusts, groaning as Sherlock’s muscles clenched around him. Somewhere else in his brain, in whatever part of it that wasn’t addles but his approaching climax, John could feel himself tiring, the pain in his leg beginning to flare. He gritted his teeth but didn’t slow down, pleasure driving him to the edge of his limits.

“John,” Sherlock said, stilling John’s movements with a hand on his arm. “You’re in pain.”

“A little,” John admitted, catching his breath.

“Move back,” Sherlock ordered, already pushing John away, untangling himself and tipping John flat onto his back. John looked up at him, speechless. 

Before John could say anything, Sherlock swung a leg over John’s hips, sinking down onto his cock in one fluid motion. He moaned loudly at the feeling of John inside of him again, at this new angle, his own weight seating John’s cock further inside of him. He barely hesitated before beginning to rock his hips, careful not to jostle John’s injured leg anymore than was necessary.

“Sh-fuck,” John slurred, head fallen back, eyes closed and face flushed, ecstasy plain on his face. Sherlock bit his lip, tasting the sweat as it rolled down his face.

“Is this better?” he asked, voice down to a rasp as he rode John harder and harder.

“Yeah- yeah.” John looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes; he gripped Sherlock’s thighs, blunt nails digging into tender skin, the sting of it sweet, spurring Sherlock on.

“Just look at you.” John’s voice was steadier, if still quite rough. “I never could have dreamt you up. Not in a hundred years. Incredible.”

“Mnm,” Sherlock responded, language failing him. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer- he took hold of his own cock, stroking himself vigorously, unable to stifle the continuous moans leaving his mouth.

“Christ, you’re gorgeous,” John continued, lifting Sherlock’s unoccupied hand, kissing each of his fingertips in turn. “Stunning, really. Not to mention amazing, and brilliant, and  _ good _ . The best, in fact. I’ve never known anyone better.”

It was then that Sherlock hit his mark. The tip of John’s cock made contact with Sherlock’s prostate, sending a jolt of electricity up his spine the likes of which he’d never felt. He nearly screamed, letting go of his cock and planting his hands on John’s chest to steady himself as his climax overtook him.

As soon as Sherlock came, John came too, shouting what must have been Sherlock’s name, though he could have sworn he lost all sentience. His vision whited out as he felt the wet warmth of Sherlock’s come splattering over his stomach and chest, his own orgasm filling Sherlock to the brim. For just a moment, it was impossible to know where the boundaries were between them, if those boundaries existed at all. The air disappeared from around them, their hearts skipped the same beat.

When the world had righted itself, Sherlock slumped forward, just as John rose to meet him. The tumbled sidelong over the bed, legs tangled, skin sweat-slicked and burning. John found that he couldn’t stop touching Sherlock, running a hand down his arm, his side, roaming back up the plains of his chest. Sherlock was the same, tracing the veins in the crook of John’s elbow, pressing his thumb to the pounding pulse in John’s neck.

“Shower?” John asked quietly. “We should get cleaned up before we fall asleep.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, “only- I don’t think I can walk at the moment.”

John smirked, sliding closer, his mouth pressed close to Sherlock’s ear. “And that wasn’t even me at full strength.”

Sherlock whimpered and kissed John hungrily, rutting instinctively against John’s hip. John kissed him back, slotting a leg between Sherlock’s, tangling his fingers in Sherlock’s hair.

“Insatiable,” he teased, and pulled himself away- every cell in his body screamed in protest, reaching back toward Sherlock- but he went anyway, limping a little as he made his way to the loo.

Sherlock rolled onto his back, luxuriating in the chaos of hormones crashing through his system. He squinted at the bright bathroom light and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of John moving around, running water. It was lulling- Sherlock felt tired in a way he knew he could very easily become addicted to, if he hadn’t already.

John emerged from the bathroom with a damp flannel, still just as naked but significantly cleaner. Sherlock reached out for him, wordlessly, not even sure why he’d done it until John was back in his arms, wiping him clean. Of all the ways John had ever touched him, this was somehow the most intimate.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” Sherlock asked, sometime later, drifting in and out of sleep with John’s arm draped over him.

“Every day for as long as you want me,” John answered, breath warm and real on the nape of Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock intended to tell John  _ forever _ , or something like it, but between one breath and the next, he’d fallen asleep.

* * *

It was quarter of three when John and Sherlock were awakened by the knocking and shouting. John was awake in a second, leaping off the bed and going immediately for his gun. Sherlock lurched upward, nearly falling to the floor, far less coordinated.

John forgot about the pain in his leg as he stumbled into the hall, gun ready, wearing only his pants. Sherlock came out behind him, wrapped in a bedsheet, rubbing at his eyes, mumbling curses.

Lestrade burst into the flat, waving his gun, fumbling around in the dark for the light switch.

“Lestrade?” John squinted as the lights flicked on. “What are you doing here?”

Lestrade, for his part, didn’t have any visible reaction to seeing the two of them in such a state, coming out of the same room.

“You two need to get dressed and come with me,” he said, pacing around, securing the room.

“What’s going on?” Sherlock demanded, no longer half-asleep.

“Your brother sent me to collect you and get you to a secure location.” He spun around, a grave look on his face.

“Victor Trevor has escaped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little more plot. I will try not to make you wait four more months.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are great, comments are better, both are the best :)
> 
> I'm on Tumblr @maudmont


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